Event Horizon
by TheEquestrianidiot 2.0
Summary: In 2040, the most ambitious project of human race was initiated that carried an advanced ship to the borders of the solar system. It never returned. Seven years later, Earth sent a rescue mission after apparently receiving a signal from the lost ship near Neptune. Now, it's up to Dipper Pines to figure out where the ship went, what it's seen . . and what it's brought back with it.
1. Chapter 1

_I own nothing. Thanks to ddp456, TheManFromMars for proofreading. You guys rock!_

* * *

><p>Dipper Pines opened his eyes and gazed upon a gray universe. Once more vented into pale reality without argument, vented into a mundane world that was, in its own dreary way, as bad as the world that lived in his dreams.<p>

Lying on his bed, sheets rumpled around his slender body, he stared at the dimly seen ceiling of his studio apartment. This part of awakening had become ritualistic over the years. The ceiling was his icon, his mandala, so lacking in features that he had discovered that it helped him focus. Over the years the ceiling had helped him find his way to one idea after another. Many mornings had been spent lying awake, images and solutions tumbling through his overactive brain.

He turned his head, frowning as beads of sweat trickled into rivulets and found their way into the lines and crags of his face. His dreams took their toll on him, even when he failed to remember anything more than a sense of unease. Once awake he could push the unease, even the terror, to the back of his mind, burying it there beneath facts and figures.

He pushed himself up slightly, enough to reach the bedside light switch, flicking it with his thumb. The sudden brightness of the halogen light made him squint. The outlines of the apartment came into focus and he winced, trying to deny the sharp jab of pain that always came when he turned on the lights. The pain would pass; it always did.

Nothing had changed, nothing ever changed, nothing ever would. The rules of his physical world did not permit such things and would not permit him to turn back time. In his world there was no higher power than the laws of physics.

He pushed the sheet away and eased slowly from the bed, trying to stretch, ignoring the little signs of age in his back, his joints. Denial of the process of aging—more an act of ignoring the physical in favor of the cerebral—had led, for a time, to an obsession with the gradual degradation of his body. That had eventually petered out, leaving him only with periodic e-mails from the gym about renewing his membership and an occasional pseudo-concerned note from his homeopath.

He walked into the bathroom, habitually making a quarter-turn to go through the narrow doorway, not bothering to close the door. A quick leak in slow motion, then a quick body wash that sloughed away the traces of sweat along with any accumulated grime.

He set out his shaving kit, filling a shaving mug-with scalding water. He foamed his face carefully and picked up the pearl-handled straight razor, opening it out with a slow, careful movement, reflecting slivers of his lined face. He turned the razor slightly in his hands, saw the hard, cold reflection of his eyes.

Dismissing the image, he looked up into his mirror and applied the edge of the razor to his face, shaving in smooth, even strokes. This method of shaving was an anachronism, seen as an affectation, tolerated or ignored by those who knew of his proclivity. Once upon a time Dipper had preferred it; these days it was no more than habit. Shaving this way had been another enforcement of precision, another element in the plan shaping his life. As with so much else in that plan, it had assumed the air of reflex.

Drip. Startled by the sound, he lifted the razor away from his face, his breathing stilled for a moment. He clearly heard the sound of air whispering through the ventilator grill in the bathroom. Drip. He looked to one side of his reflection, focusing on the bathtub tucked into a corner of the tiny bathroom. Drip. Slowly, he turned around, staring.

He felt very cold, but knew that the temperature had not changed.

Water oozed from the faucet, coalescing into a large, ungainly bubble of water before giving way to the demands of gravity. Odd, he thought, that gravity demands so much of us that when we rest we fall asleep.

Drip.

He turned back to the mirror and resumed his shaving, slowly, precisely, and smoothly. He splashed water into his face, toweled himself dry, throwing the towel over the rack when he was done. The bathroom needed cleaning, he noted, but he could not be bothered to stoop to the chore often these days. He picked up his comb and swiped carelessly at his hair, pushing it back into place. He was a scientist, and no one really cared how a scientist looked.

_Just deliver the super-bomb, Doctor, and we'll overlook your breach of the dress code_.

From the bathroom to the closet, and a change of clothes, half-heartedly smoothing out wrinkles. Dressed, he went into the kitchenette, opened the tiny refrigerator, and stared helplessly into its disorganized interior. New forms of life were being generated in there, he was sure; in the meantime, the examination yielded only the usual archaeological data. One of these days he was going to have to put something fresh in there or arrange for a biohazard team to remove the fridge.

He opened a cabinet, extracted a box of instant oatmeal, added milk powder, water, salt, and too much sugar, irradiating the compound result in the microwave until it was suitably unappetizing and had developed a texture akin to wet, sweetened sawdust. Spooning a mouthful of this unwelcome body fuel into his mouth and chewing morosely, he went to the window. Another mouthful of too-sweet mush, then the last part of the morning ritual.

He reached out and opened the blinds that covered the window. The starscape blazed in at him, giving color to his gray world. The stars were the main attraction in this habitat section of Daylight Station—Earth lay below them, beneath the "south" side, and all that could be seen from his quarters was a cheerful glow at the bottom edge of the window, if you leaned forward in just the right way. Dipper never bothered to try and catch the glow, and he never really looked at the starscape, never had, his mind always being on something else. These days his mind was usually empty when he looked out this way, voided in dreams and nightmares. Even so, nothing came to him now, only the hard clarity of too many stars seen through vacuum.

He finished his oatmeal, retracing his steps to the kitchenette, putting the bowl into the dishwasher. Several others, crusted with varying amounts of decaying oatmeal, already occupied the top rack. He closed the machine carefully and poured himself a glass of tepid water.

The videophone buzzed angrily, startling him. He placed his glass on the kitchenette counter, and made his way around to the phone. He could barely remember the last call he had received—no one called him unless they needed something. Most of the people he knew or worked with tried to avoid needing anything from him. The only one who ever called was Mabel.

The videophone buzzed again. He tugged at his bottom lip, frowning at the blank-screened instrument. He scanned the nameplate as the third buzz began, waved his hand over the call pickup sensor.

"This is Pines," he said, and was surprised at how dusty and unused his voice sounded, and he squeezed his eyes shut. _Take a note, Dipper Pines: you need to socialize more._

A voice spoke quickly and softly on the end, "Dr. Pines, report to the Lewis and Clark, docking bay number four."

He opened his eyes, nodded coldly, and waved a hand over the call hang up sensor. It was time to get started. At least he would get to see his sister again.

* * *

><p>The hull of the Lewis and Clark did a good job of reflecting the state of its crew. The ship was badly in need of a full overhaul, perhaps even a partial refit, after long-haul duty out in the Big Rock Range. Asteroid belt patrol duty offered little in the way of rewards and a great deal in the way of hazards and ship wear.<p>

The Lewis and Clark was not a pretty ship. Her builders had essentially taken an enormous ion drive and built a spaceship around it, making a place for instrumentation and, grudgingly, for a small crew, a configuration that one British wag had proclaimed to her captain, Wendy Corduroy, as being "All arse and no fore'ead." A muscleship with armor that would make a cockroach cheer, she could stand up to almost anything short of a high-speed encounter with a big chunk of rock. She could easily deal with a no-maintenance turnaround and another run, this one taking them much further than the Big Rock Range.

Inside, she was no great comfort. Captain Corduroy, poised loosely in her con as she tried to remain relaxed, looked down on her demesne. Behind thick quartz windows in the nose, the bridge was a compacted nightmare of instruments on two horseshoe levels. Operator's chairs seemed to have been wedged into the best available positions that might still allow some movement, suggesting that the human component had been the last consideration here.

Two of those human components were packed too closely together at the front of the bridge. There was enough elbow room, but the feeling on these boats was that you had better maintain a friendship prayer on a long haul, or someone was surely going to get mauled, maimed, or murdered.

Tambry, a dark skinned, purple haired navigations expert, sat to the left, focused on her navigational readouts, running cool but intense. She was on this crew because Wendy had wanted her on this crew, and she knew she had enough clout somewhere to get away with demanding that she be assigned to the Lewis and Clark. Her hair was pulled back, pinned severely in place, giving her angular face the look of a professional ascetic.

Robbie V sat to her right, hunched over his console. Tambry glanced aside at the pilot, who was fluttering his hands over keypads, laying their course as he read it from her navigational feed to his console. A good pilot, Wendy thought, but a lousy diplomat.

Suddenly done with his work, Robbie straightened, rubbed at his face, and sat back abruptly, making his pilot's chair wobble gently on its gimbal mount.

He heaved a sigh.

Wendy, looking down, sympathized.

Robbie tilted his head back, looking up at the Captain's position. "I can't believe this bullshit. I haven't gotten more than my fuckin' hand in six weeks, and now this shit." Wendy saw Tambry purse her lips at Robbie's remark. He liked to needle the navigator. "Why not Mars, Captain? At least Mars has women. Neptune? There's nothing out there. If the shit goes down, we'll be on our own," Robbie said. The pilot had a look of deep concern. Wendy could not blame him for his feelings on the matter either. It was going to be goddamned lonely out there.

Wendy tapped a switch on the main operations panel of her chair and was swiveled around and lowered into the center of the bridge. She appreciated the visual effect of this setup, although she could not see it-for herself. She was not a small woman by far; she had stood at a whopping 6'0 ft even (having a lumberjack family really had its advantages), but she had chosen not to give in to the hints and coercion in high school, preferring instead to pour the contents of book after book into her brain. The net result of that was that she could not only strike terror into the hearts of those she wished to terrify, she knew enough in the way of psychology and strategy that she could have them running errands and doing she laundry. That, and the fear of her always angry father, Dan.

Coming down from the con had the effect of Zeus coming down from Olympus.

Wendy cultivated an intense, brooding look and a watchful air, the image of the dedicated warrior. She was not a particularly beautiful woman, but she kept and carried herself well.

As the chair locked in place, Wendy said, "You know the rules. We get the call, we go. Is the course locked in?"

"Locked and cocked," Robbie said. The pilot turned back to his station, his back tensing up. Does he ever relax? Wendy wondered. One of these days he was just going to explode on the spot.

Tambry glanced at her board, then back at Wendy. "We're past the outer marker. We can engage the ion drive whenever you're ready." Wendy liked Tambry's intelligence, but had never gone so far as to express that to her, for fear that she would take offense. The purple haired girl had never been particularly approachable.

Wendy turned her attention to the other stations in the lower section of the bridge. The boards for the ship's systems and mission stations were down there. Some folks referred to this part of the bridge as "the pit." Wendy had never approved of the term, and no one on her crew used it. Such terms tended to generate negative moods, and she wanted as few of those as she could get on long hauls. The crew instead referred to it as the "war room," a term she let slide.

"Mabel?"

Mabel, the ecstatic co-pilot, and brother to Dipper Pines looked up, eyes shining. "Everything green on my boards, Wendy."

She waved a hand over her instruments with a casual air that Wendy figured would be gone in another ten years. Mabel was fresh-faced still, despite the pallor that the media liked to call Spacer's Tan. At least Mabel had some excitement about this mission. And according to what Mabel had told her earlier, this would've the first time she had see her brother again in eight years. Everyone else was bitching about having to pull another long haul and going to Neptune. .

Neptune. Better be something awfully important out there.

Mabel was waiting, watching her with the eager intentness of a puppy. She took another look at her own boards, then turned back to her bridge crew. "Start the countdown."

There was a bustle of activity. Readouts on several monitors changed to show a digital clock.

Tambry said, "Ion drive will engage in"—a pause, while she waited for status lights to change on her boards— "T-minus ten minutes."

"Let's go." Wendy released her restraints and rose carefully from her chair. Below her, Mabel was rising from her seat, clearing a space. Wendy swung around onto the ladder that connected the two bridge sections, covering the distance in a fireman's slide. Robbie and Tambry followed her down, Robbie climbing in that stiff way of his, Tambry sliding down.

Wendy ducked and turned through the hatch from the war room, her crew following her through the ship, into the main airlock bay. By that time they could have found it by following the sound of something akin to music. There was a radio at the end of the tunnel, rather than a light, and it was jacked up to earbleed level, making the walls thrum in distressed sympathy with the beat. Along the walls of the bay was a row of extra-vehicular activity suits, stowed neatly, impervious to the pounding rhythm.

Wendy came through the hatch looking like angry thunder, her entourage behind her. Before she had even focused on the sole live occupant of the bay, she was snapping, "Shut it off!"

Lee, tall, with a tan, and long black hair, barely missed a beat, swinging around and stowing a freshly wrapped safety line in a storage locker. He high-stepped to another storage locker, hitting the power switch on the jambox that had been built into the top. _No wonder that damned thing was so loud_, Wendy thought, as Lee fell in with the others; the jambox speakers were using half the ship as a resonant chamber.

"Time to play Spam in the can," Lee said, grinning ear-to-ear at his captain's back, his tone sarcastic.

Wendy did not waste her time looking back. "Don't start with me, Lee," she snapped, and smiled inwardly as she heard the tone of Lee's footfalls change. He had smartened up immediately, unconsciously adopting a military posture and gait. Wendy was glad she could count on her crew to maintain standards when necessary.

They continued onward to the crew quarters. Everything had been stowed for docking, bunks folded up, chairs and tables put away in their cubbies, the video units locked down, even the galley cleaned up and cleaned out. They had been restocked for this mission, but had not yet had time to get things into the usual state of a long-haul galley, a situation that was a relief to Wendy, who only tolerated the mess because it was particularly bad for morale to be thoroughly iron-handed. As long as they played the game according to the unwritten rules, cleaning up after themselves every couple of days, she was content to let things slide.

Soos, the large, friendly, technician was crouched down at floor level, an access panel pulled up and placed to one side of him while he worked, loading carbon dioxide scrubbers into the ventilation system backup. That had been part of the restocking situation too. When the orders had come down from On High, the maintenance crews had been redirected and all efforts aimed at a fast resupply.

"Captain Corduroy…"

Wendy turned her head at the sound of Dipper Pines's voice. The scientist was standing to one side of the crew quarters, looking as though he would prefer to be hiding in the head. Wendy glared at him, her jaw set.

Pines was not about to be cowed that easily. Staring back at Wendy, he tried again. "I just wanted to say—"

"The clock is running, Dr. Pines," Wendy said, ice and steel in her voice.

She took two steps toward Dipper, almost closing the distance, her body language as non-threatening as possible otherwise. Dipper tried to flinch back, but had nowhere to go. "If you'll follow the rest of the crew, they'll show you to the gravity tanks."

For a moment, it seemed as though Pines was going to insist on talking to Wendy, and never mind the consequences. Finally, he closed his mouth and swallowed hard. The rest of the crew had passed behind Wendy by this point, Lee stopping and half-turning in the hatchway that lead out toward Medical.

Wendy waited for the inevitable smart-ass comment from him, but it never came; instead, he gave Dipper an impatient look.

Pines sidled away from Wendy, then turned and followed Lee out of the crew quarters. Wendy stood for a moment, listening to the noises of her ship, the little creaks here and there, the hums, the high-frequency hissing of blank gray monitors. Space was supposed to be silent; spaceships never were.

Vibrations traveled from the hull plates, resonated through the ship, manifested as sound from the bulkhead.

Wendy turned back to Soos, looking down at him. "What's the holdup?"

"Just loading the last of the CO2 scrubbers, dude", he said, twisting his backwards hat towards the front of his head . He looked up at her, gave her a smile. Wendy relaxed a little.

Soos did not seem concerned about anything here, so she saw no reason to worry.

Soos finished his work and closed the access panel, securing it. He brushed his hands together and stood up, following Wendy out of the crew quarters and down to Medical.

Medical was a little more open and spacious than most areas of the ship, if only to allow the ship's doctor some elbowroom. Everything here was modular in format, allowing swift reconfiguration in an emergency. The walls were full of surprises: there was equipment here that major earth-side hospitals would go crazy to get. Gravity Couches, tall, broad tubes built for human occupancy, stood against the walls, anchored in the deck plates. Each of them had been opened and activated, waiting only to be filled.

Wendy looked around, and found Nate, the ship's doctor, over with Robbie, preparing the pilot for his time in the tank. Robbie gave Nate an angry look, to no avail. Nate swabbed Robbie's arm with an alcohol pad, then, in a flash, jabbed a hypodermic needle into the pilot's arm, pressing the plunger down a bit harder than required. Robbie shook Nate's hand off, turned, and climbed into one of the tanks, closing his eyes.

_Great bedside manner, Nate_, Wendy thought. Nate turned, looked for a moment at Wendy, nodded, dropped the used hypodermic into a biohazard box, and went on to Lee. Lee, as usual, had dispensed with even the smallest display of modesty, standing before his gravity couch with only his sassy attitude and a pair of dog tags to keep him warm. Lee, grinning, offered his arm to Nat, who did no more than swab and impale.

To one side of him, Tambry kicked off her boots and started to shuck out of her flight suit, going to hang it up in a storage locker. Time was moving; the ion drive would not wait for Wendy. She pulled off his own boots and unzipped his suit, stripping down to her regulation undergarments.

Done with Lee, who went to let it all hang out in his Gravity Couch, Nate moved over to Mabel, frowning for a moment at the silver pentacle hanging around Mabel's neck with her dog tags. Nate could not raise an objection, however. Just as the dog tags were permissible in the tank, so was religious and matrimonial jewelry. There had been instances of people dying in a Gravity Couch, and woe betide those who thought to deprive them of their comforting icons.

Nate swabbed, stabbed. Mabel winced, followed up with a pained smile, went to her tank, and laid down.

"Captain Corduroy …"

Wendy turned her head, her expression darkening. Dipper was approaching, an almost pleading look on his face. He had stripped down to black bikini underwear.

"Not now," Wendy said, sharply. She looked around, found Soos, gestured to him. He walked over. "Soos, show Dr. Pines to his couch, please."

Dipper shut his mouth. Soos took the scientist's arm, gently, leading him away from Wendy.

Nate approached, intent on Wendy. Making sure I get the point, as Lee says.

Wendy offered her arm.

Soos kept his light hold on Dipper's arm as he led him over to an unattended Gravity Couch. Dipper was not sure whether he should be offended or complimented by this very specific treatment, deciding, in the end, to have little or no reaction at all, blanking everything out as usual.

Dipper looked the Gravity Couch over, uncertain. His name was written in black marker on a piece of masking tape stuck to an open area on the operations plate. The tube was lined with padding, the gel feeders almost invisible.

His chest tightened, and he had difficulty breathing. Soos's hand tightened slightly on his arm, reassuring, but it did not make the anxiety attack cease.

He looked at his face, smiling warmly at him as he tried to regain control. "First time in a grav couch, dude?"

Dipper swallowed hard, and found that his throat was dry. "Yeah."

Soos checked over the Gravity Couch with a practiced eye, inspecting the seals and checking the lining. Taking Dipper's arm again, he helped him to get into place inside the tall tube.

Over at the other side of the medical bay, Nate, was administering a shot to Captain Corduroy. As Nate withdrew the needle, Wendy straightened het arm out, flexing the muscles, making her pale skin ripple. Silent, Wendy climbed into her Gravity Couch and closed her eyes.

Wendy dealt with, Nate came toward Dipper, who felt his chest tighten again.

Scientist or not, he had been terrified of medical procedures since childhood; needles were the worst. He had never even been able to tolerate local anesthetics for dental work—one look at that hypo of Novocain and he was fleeing for his life.

Distracting himself, Dipper said, "Your captain seems to have some sort of problem with me."

Soos smiled again. "Don't worry about her, dude," he said, the undertone of his voice suggesting to Dipper that he thought Wendy was just a big old teddybear under all the gruff authority. "She loves having complete strangers on board."

_Very reassuring_, Dipper thought.

Nate was at his side, now, Soos giving way to him, going off to prepare himself. Silently, focused on his work, Nate took Dipper's arm, swabbing it with alcohol. The treatment was not particularly kind, verging on painful. Dipper did not feel singled out for special mistreatment, however—even Wendy had been handled brusquely.

Still, he disliked the process. Trying to keep his mind of what was to come, he said, "Is that really necessary?"

Nate gave him a measured look, not answering for a moment. _Trying to decide if I'm a complete idiot or just blowing smoke_, Dipper thought, uneasily.

An eyebrow raised, Nate said, "When the ion drive fires, we'll be taking about thirty gees. Without a tank, the force would liquefy your skeleton." The doctor's tone was patronizing, and Dipper bridled at this.

"I've seen the effect on mice," Dipper said, more sharply than he had intended. The ship, he knew, also had inertial dampers that mitigated the effects of acceleration.

Nate shook his head, sighing, and Dipper knew that he had failed whatever sort of idiot test Nate had. He closed his eyes and held his breath, wishing himself to some other, kinder, place. Once again, his prayers were not answered. There was a sharp pain in his arm as Nate jabbed a needle into his arm, followed by a worse pain as the doctor injected the medication into him. Dipper winced, bit his lip. Liquid warmth spread from the injection site, up and down his arm.

He opened his eyes again, to see Nate disposing of the hypodermic and the swab. The doctor turned back, reaching for the Couch door. He saw Dipper's expression, took stock of the scientist's tense posture. "Claustrophobic?"

"Very," Dipper said, grateful that someone was at least paying a little attention to him. He was even more grateful for the warm lethargy that was beginning to steal over him.

Nate slammed the Couch door. There was the sound of the door being dogged shut, somewhere in the distance.

Dipper faded.

Dipper dreamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Fifty-six days out of Daylight Station, with Neptune looming close, the USAC Lewis and Clark responded to its own inner voices. Its crew slept on, entombed in the heart of the spaceship, but it did not need them, not right now.

For fifty-six days the Lewis and Clark had answered only the call of its own electronic mind. Now it followed a new compulsion, approaching its target.

Maneuvering thrusters fired in sequence, first correcting pitch and yaw, then, stability ensured, firing delicate bursts at just the right vectors to cause its lumbering bulk to slowly roll forward.

Head over heels, the Lewis and Clark turned to face back the way it had come. Thrusters fired again, stopping the roll. A silent countdown followed.

The ion drive ignited, a brilliance that, out here at least, shamed the sun. Fusion fire roared silently in the vacuum, slowing the ship.

Inside the heart of the vessel, another countdown began. When it was done, the sleepers would awaken.

The Lewis and Clark flew on.

* * *

><p>There was a voice, somewhere, calling him. The world was dark, formless.<br>Somehow, he knew this place. He was a blind man, a deaf man, his senses cut away, leaving him void.

The voice came again, but now it deepened, thickened, became a swirling mass of noise, the massed choir of the damned pouring under and over. Humanity tangled with inhumanity in that terrible knotwork of sound, abrading him as it passed, leaving him bleeding at the edges of his soul.

A tiny corner of his conscious mind informed him that he was enduring the effects of his time in the Gravity Couch. He was reawakening.

Reassured by this thought, he somehow managed to open his eyes, to see. The other Gravity Couches came into sight, each of them filled with an inert-figure suspended in dark fluid. Fair enough, that was how he must look, then.

With shocking abruptness, his viewpoint whirled about. Suddenly, he was staring at his own tank with its piece of yellowing masking tape stuck to the operations panel. His body was immobile, eyes closed. He could not tell whether he was looking upon a sleeping man or gazing at a corpse. For all he knew, they were all dead.

Whispering again, someone whispering.

The sound resolved slowly: a woman's voice in the distance, voice hushed and bodiless, the sounds of a specter.

Forlorn, that voice, and now it was becoming clearer.

"_Dipper_…"

He felt ice creep from his crotch to his heart, and found himself wondering how a ghost could experience sensation. He wanted to explore now, to find the voice, answer its siren call.

Before him, his body, formerly dead, if only in hypersleep, came to life, eyes opening. In a flash, his vision shading to green for a moment, Dipper found himself back inside his own flesh, firmly anchored. His world was liquid, warm, filled with tinted blurs. He had no sense of breathing.

He had no sense of panic.

"_I'm so cold_…"

His Gravity Couch drained, the gel sluicing away with remarkable speed. He could move now, if only in slow motion. Lifting a hand, he pressed his palm against the cold door, pushing. The door opened easily.

Another sound in the distance, reverberant in a place that should have been anechoic: drip… drip… drip. The sound of water dripping where it was not supposed to drip.

He looked around, found the crew members still suspended in their tanks. Only he had been awakened and had emerged. Why is that? he wondered. No answer was forthcoming, and he discovered that this did not concern him at the moment.  
>The dripping continued, filling his world.<p>

The voice came again, whispering through the ship. _"I'm so cold…"_

Drawn, he walked, slow-motion, to the hatchway and found that his tentative steps were being made in twenty-league boots, covering great distances through the ship. Within several steps he was at the bridge of the Lewis and Clark, standing in the second level, behind the pilot's chair.

Dripping.

Water dripped to the floor of the bridge, making pools, running in rivulets along the plating. The pilot's chair was soaked, streaming. A woman sat in the chair, her too-pale skin drenched, glittering, her sodden hair plastered to her naked back.

As thought rooted to the deck, Dipper stood and stared. Uncertainly, he whispered, "Hello?"

There was no answer from the woman in the pilot's chair, nor did she move.

She gave no indication that she knew anyone was there.

No indication that she was even alive.

There was only the sound of the water dripping. He could not hear the sound of breathing, not even his.

Slowly, he reached out to touch her shoulder, hesitated, feeling cold stealing over his fingertips.

Fear bubbled darkly within him, rose.

He pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist.

No movement, no sound, only water.

He forced his hand to unclench, straightening the fingers. He reached out slowly, ignoring the cold, touching her hair, feeling the cold wetness. No reaction. He might as well have been touching a statue.

He looked down, hoping for a glimpse of her face, a reflection, finding it in the moribund computer displays. There was something wrong with the reflection, though, something distorted. The planes and contours of her face were shifting, as though something lived under the skin, in the bone, and was pushing angrily to be free.

The fear welled up in a dark torrent now, soul-poisonous and choking.

Panicking, he spun her chair, making it rock on its gimbals.

Mabel stared up at him.

"I'm waiting," she said, the sound filling this reality with undertones of screaming, hissing, crawling voices. His soul splintered. The darkness swept through him. Silence.

* * *

><p>He fell through the silence, through the darkness, all sensation absent.<p>

His eyes opened, and he was flooded with light. There was a sucking sound too close to his head, then a humming that made him wince, his mind and body too sensitive, too raw to withstand it for very long. There was something in his mouth, coating his tongue, making him salivate uncontrollably.

Surging from the darkness and silence, falling back into the world, he found himself surrounded by metal and plastic, a coffin too tight around him, crushing in, threatening him with suffocation and darkness. There was light, in front of him, but he found that he could not reach it through the wall around his body.  
>Something moved toward him through the bright blur.<p>

His heart pounded frantically, making the veins in his neck and wrist pulse. Blood seemed replaced with fire, yet he felt cold all over, layered with ice.

Unable to think, to reason out a proper course of action, he lifted his hands and pushed at the door of his Gravity Couch. The inner surface was slick with the remnants of the gel, smearing as his hands slipped. Furiously, he pounded the heel of his right hand against the unyielding door, trying to make it give way. This effort availed him nothing.

He lurched backward, as far as he could go, intending to kick at the door, to pummel it with his heels to make it give, to allow him freedom to breathe. Before he could strike the first blow, there was a loud hydraulic hiss, deafening in the confined space. His tomb opened to decant him.

Off balanced, Dipper fell forward, his feet sliding in gel on the floor of the tank. With no one to catch him and nothing to grab to stop his fall, he crashed to the deck, his right shoulder, hip, and knee flaring with pain. Gel and saliva poured from his mouth, pooled by his face as he gasped for breath, a human fish drowning in oxygen. His lungs and bronchia flamed, tried to close up, leaving him wheezing and moving weakly as the claustrophobia continued to shake him, closing his mind down in a paroxysm of terror. The medical bay was a vague place to him, perceived through a veil. He fought for focus, but it would not come.

Mabel was quickly at his side, one hand on his shoulder, another on his wrist, so familiar, so warm, adjusting so that she could take a reading of his pulse.  
>"Mabel…" he said, his voice little more than a gasp. The last thing he remembered was Mabel. Something wrong with Mabel.<p>

He felt his sister's hands tighten on him, trying to soothe, trying to calm him-back to this reality he had fallen into. He knew that she wanted to get inside his head, to deal with this latest crisis of his, but he refused that help, had always refused that kind of help. He railed against her contact, not wanting to release either the past or the nightmare until he understood it, had mapped the geography of life gone awry.  
>He gasped in another breath and the fires shot into his head, into his belly.<p>

"Nate!" Mabel called, her voice urgent. Her hands tightened again, then relaxed as she said, "It's okay, bro-bro! I'm here! I'm right here! You're okay! I'm okay! All of us are! Just breathe." Her face came into view, a curious mixture a mother and a professional medic, concerned and observant.

Dipper wanted to fight her, to keep struggling for his anguish, but the edges of the nightmare were fading now, and the claustrophobia was easing, here in the open medical bay. There was a sense of relaxation in his chest, and he found that it was becoming easier to breathe. The graying at the edges of his vision began to recede, leaving a scattering of little stars flashing in his vision.

Dipper looked up. All of the crew stood in a circle around him, looking down.  
>Nate, emergency pack in hand, was kneeling beside him, checking him over for serious damage. Dipper had no doubt that Nate could, if necessary, have him sedated in a matter of moments.<p>

He stared up at his sister and suddenly hugged her as tight as he could. He felt her tense for a brief second, but she returned the hug with equal force. "It's okay. You're alright", she said. Dipper closed his eyes for a moment as his body began to relax.  
>He looked up at Nate, released himself from his sister and tried to push himself into at least a sitting position.<p>

"I'm all right now," he said, knowing it to be a magnificent lie. Stubbornly, not willing to admit that the truth fell far short of the statement, he repeated his assertion: "I'm all right."

To prove the point to those of the crew who doubted this assertion—everyone, as far as he could tell—he tried to push himself to his feet. His legs shook violently as he tried to stand, and his knees buckled, the muscles refusing to have anything to do with his intended course of action. Nate caught him before he could tumble back to the deck, helping him to stay upright. Mabel stood on the other side of him for support. Nate was a cold monolith.

"Move slowly," Nate said, staring at him without flinching. "You've been in stasis for fifty-six days. You're going to experience a little disorientation."

A little. Something dark had crawled into his dreams in the tank, and he was not quite back in the real world now. Reality had not spun around him as confusedly as this since the first time he had ridden to orbit, taking an ill-advised window seat in the big elevator car on Skyhook One.

Nate quickly looked Dipper over before letting him go. Dipper wobbled for a moment, unsteady and queasy, but finally managed to keep his balance. There was a faint sense of embarrassment at standing there in nothing more than bikini briefs, the center of attention for the entire crew, but there was nothing to be done about that.

At least there was Lee, still bare-ass naked and utterly free of all concern, leaning in to Dipper and saying, "Damn, Dr. Pines, don't scare us like that!" Dipper gave him a sickly smile.

"Coffee?"

"What?" Dipper said.

Lee trotted over to the wall, pulling out a large metal cylinder. He held this up for Dipper to see. "Coffee."

Dipper frowned in understanding, an expression that made his face hurt. "No, thank you." Lee shrugged and turned away.

The crew had returned to purposeful movement, leaving Dipper standing, confused and disconsolate, in the middle of the room. Wendy was already into her flight suit, while Robbie, in a corner, did stretching exercises, limbering himself up.

Lee, still showing no concern about dressing, had opened the metal cylinder and was pouring coffee into a mug he had retrieved from one cubbyhole or another. Nate had stowed his emergency kit and quickly pulled on a flight suit. Tambry was climbing into her flight suit, drawing an admiring glance from Lee who, Dipper noted, was mainly admiring Tambry's backside.

Without looking around, Tambry flipped Lee the bird. His eyes lit up as he smiled. "Is that an offer?"

"It is not," was Tambry's growled reply.

Dipper went in search of his own clothes, trying to understand how anyone could get used to the effects of long-term Gravity Couch suspension. His entire body felt toxic and his mind was sluggish, drained of energy and knowledge. He felt unwilling and unable to accommodate anyone's needs right now—he was not sure that he could even manage to dress.

At least they were close to their—his—goal. The Event Horizon was waiting, full of truths that were rightfully his. He had sent the Event Horizon and her crew down the rabbit hole. Whatever knowledge she had gleaned about Wonderland was his to hold first.

Wendy pulled on her boots, quickly lacing them up, then zipped up her flight suit. There was no sign of playfulness about her, only an economy of movement that Dipper envied and a fierce energy that left him apprehensive.

Wendy turned towards Tambry, who was pulling on her boots. "Tambry," she said, "why aren't you on the bridge?"

Tambry gave her an acidic look, but it was not enough to make Wendy relent. Still, she was not about to be bullied. Lacing up a boot, she growled back, "Do you mind if I get dressed first?"

"Yes I do," Wendy said. She bunched her hands into fists, put those on her hips, planted her feet apart, turning her head, surveying her crew, her domain. Dipper honestly did not want to cross this woman. "Come on, people, let's go!"

Tambry was the first one through the exit, followed closely by Robbie, Mabel, Soos, and Nate. Wendy turned to follow, then swung back, his face a study in thunder. "And, Lee," the Captain added, giving Lee's crotch a withering glance, "put some goddamn pants on."

* * *

><p>It seemed to Dipper as though activity aboard the Lewis and Clark, once begun, never paused for a moment. Wendy, Tambry, and Robbie went forward, into the bridge, to do whatever it was that spaceship bridge crews did at times like these.<p>

Somewhere along the way, Sos had handed him a big warm blanket and he had wrapped himself in this, hoping to combat the shivering. He knew he was suffering from some kind of shock related to the time he had spent suspended in the Gravity Couch, but at the moment he would have preferred not to have any kind of ability to think. Either sleep or a nice warm corner would have done just as well. Neither Mabel nor Lee had been able to convince him that the ship's interior temperature was reasonable—he felt cold.

Mabel, Lee, and Soos had set to in the crew's quarters, turning them into a place to spend time, opening bunks, unfolding tables, taking out chairs. The Lewis and Clark was a fine example of environmental engineering, Dipper thought, with just about everything aboard designed to fit into a niche or fold away. It was easy for the crew to make room or ready the ship for the powerful thrust from the ion drive.

At the moment, Nate was moving around in the cabin, checking radiation badges, apparently for something to do while he avoided talking to Dipper. For the moment, Dipper found it hard to care—if anything, he would rather be left alone, huddled on a chair at the side of the cabin. This particular misery was not something he had anticipated. Scribbling equations all over reams of paper did not prepare a man for the realities of deep-space travel.

Lee, Mabel, and Soos had finished setting up the crew's quarters and were now comfortable on bunks, Soos watching a video unit. The two crew members were engaged in pitching a small ball back and forth across the cabin, their expressions gradually easing into mock display of contempt for each other.

Lee once again snatched the ball out of the air, sneering at Mabel.

"When are you gonna put some heat on that?" He snapped the ball back at Mabel.

She caught it, staring into Lee's eyes, challenging. "You can't handle my junk, don't ask for the heat." The ball sailed back again, straight for Lee's head.

"Come on, dudes! Easy with the ball throwing!" Soos said, not looking up from the video unit he was watching. Both Lee and Mabel ignored this automatic response from him, continuing to toss the ball between them, somehow managing to avoid Nate.

Dipper leaned forward, tilting his head, curious about the video she was watching. He had taken out a handheld unit, rather than using the Lewis and Clark's main video system, and the sounds he had been hearing confirmed his suspicion—this was something of a more private nature rather than a professional production of some kind.

Soos saw Dipper looking over at his video unit, and he had a momentary flash of embarrassment at being caught in his peeping game. Rather than the negative reaction Dipper expected, however, Soos turned slightly, tilting the unit so that Dipper could see the screen. Soos turned his attention back to what she was watching.

Dipper focused on the screen, blinking as the image changed rapidly, blurring first with a panning movement, then with a too-fast zoom. He saw the makings of a party, ribbons, balloons, heard the sounds of children and a thin background of music.

The image blurred again, then blanked. The screen cleared to show a child in a wheelchair. Dipper estimated the boy's age at four or five, wondering how far off he was. He could make only a bare guess at the nature of the child's handicap, or how long he had been in the wheelchair, though the chair itself did not appear to have been heavily used. The boy was grinning happily, waving his arms. Not quadriplegic then, he thought; a simple paraplegia of some kind, leaving the mind intact and the body more or less functional. Some of these physical dysfunctions could be corrected now, with the help of nanosurgery, but not all.

The boy held up his arms, laughing. "Play horsey, Daddy, play horsey!" he called.

The image shook and shifted and abruptly zoomed back. Soos came into view on the video screen, looking sunny and relaxed. To Dipper, he did not look the slightest bit like someone who spent a great deal of time in space.

Soos, watching, smiled.

Soos, on the screen, laughing, cried, "Want to play horsey, do ya?" in a voice that bespoke fatherhood and joy. He bent and grasped the child in one long swooping motion that made the boy howl with delight, lifting him out of the wheelchair, flying him through the air, somehow ending up with him on his back.

Somewhere deep inside Dipper there was an ache. He chose not to address it, choosing instead to accept the diversion of Wendy striding through the hatchway, coming back to the crew quarters from the bridge. He kept his silence as Wendy sat down next to Soos, giving him a sympathetic glance.

"I put in for a replacement for you," Wendy said, without even glancing at Dipper, "but on short notice like this…"

She might as well have pointed a finger directly at Dipper. Shame burned in Dipper's chest, mixed with an uncomfortable rage. It isn't my fault! he thought angrily. He had not planned this, arid he had not singled out Wendy's ship and crew. Wendy did not seem to want to approach this rationally.

Soos shrugged and shut off the video unit, putting it aside. "No, no, it's all right. It's cool," he said, and gave Dipper a friendly, understanding glance, almost speaking to him. "I talked to Melody. She'll take care of Denny until I get back from this." He gave Wendy a brittle smile that told the truth about his dilemma and his feelings. "So everything's all right."

Tambry and Robbie arrived, also coming back from the bridge, both of them looking tense, neither of them paying Dipper much attention. Tambry sat down next to Wendy, leaning forward, while Robbie took up a position behind the chair Dipper was huddling on. Dipper looked around, up, for a moment, risking a crick in his neck. Robbie looked down at him like the wrath of God, his dark eyes unwavering. It figured, Dipper thought. He had managed to usurp the pilot's regular crew quarters chair.

Lee and Mabel paid the psychodrama no attention whatsoever, tossing the ball back and forth.

Behind Dipper, Robbie intoned, "Two hours to Neptune orbit." The words had all the sound and authority of the Last Trump, meant to make Dipper quake.

Robbie's pronouncement out of the way, Tambry looked at Wendy and said, "All boards are green, everything's five by five."

"That's good to know," Wendy rumbled. The ball whizzed by her, on its way from Lee to Mabel. Wendy gave the younger woman an impatient look that was tinged with the suggestion of violence. "Mabel, you wanna stow that, please?"

Mabel clutched the ball to her chest, looking abashed. Lee grinned at her, while Soos offered a "I told you so!" look. Dad might let the boys and girls get away with it, but Mom was home now….

Wendy leaned forward, clasping her hands together, her expression deadly serious. "Okay, listen up," she said, looking around at his crew. "As you all know, we have an addition to our crew. Dr. Pines, this is: Tambry, my XO; Robbie, pilot; I think it's obvious you know our ship's engineer, Mabel-"

"We call her Baby Bear," Lee interrupted, sliding smoothly into the gap that Wendy granted him. Mabel grinned and Tambry snorted, amused.

Wendy looked around at Lee, who was lounging insouciantly on his bunk.

"This is Lee. What the hell do you do on this ship, anyway?"

Lee gave a show of thinking, his eyebrows working.

Taking his cue, Mabel said, "Ballast."

Lee leaned down over the side of the bunk, threatening to slide off onto the deck. He gave Dipper a kissy-face stare that made the scientist flinch back.

"I am your best friend," Lee said, his voice singsong, "I am a lifesaver and a heartbreaker…"

Dipper was not sure how he should react to this particular display, so he chose to avoid a response altogether. Helplessly, he looked at Wendy, who looked impatiently back. "He's a rescue technician. Soos, medical technician, Nate…"

"Trauma," Nate said, softly.

So Nate and Soos were the medical tag team, one dealing with the broken ones Soos could not easily fix.

Lee hauled himself back onto his bunk, his expression serious for once. "All right, everybody knows each other. So what are we doing all the way out here, Red?"

"Dr. Pines?" Wendy said, turning to look at the bedraggled scientist.

Dipper cleared his throat, hesitating. At the beginning he had imagined dramatic pronouncements and grand moments. Instead, he was wrapped in a blanket, stuffed into a spacecraft that had very little to do with human comfort, and presented with a small crew that was almost openly hostile. Had he known how things were to have worked out, he would still have demanded to go with the salvage crew.

It was time he tried to smooth things over.

This in mind, he said, "First of all, I'd like to say how much I appreciate this opportunity—"

Wendy rolled her eyes, shook her head, anger radiating off of her in waves. "Dr. Pines," she growled slowly, "we did not volunteer for this mission. We were pulled off leave to be sent to Neptune. It is three billion klicks past even the remotest outpost." Wendy took a deep breath. "And the last time the USAC attempted a rescue this far out, we lost both ships. So, please… cut to it."

So there was another root cause of Wendy's attitude. Rescue and salvage was Wendy's life, and she knew the odds for success in most situations. What Dipper knew and he believed Wendy would eventually learn was that the Event Horizon was extraordinary, that the mission they were on was without precedent.

Dipper took a deep breath. "Ok. Everything I am about to tell you is considered Code Black by the NSA."

Dipper paused, letting the crew have time to look at each other. A Code Black classification was not something a crew like this would hear on a regular basis. Interservice rivalries had not waned since the paranoia of the 1950s, with bureaucratic interchanges turning into nightmares of documents, codes, classifications, protocols, and formats. For USAC to accept a National Security Agency Code Black without apparent comment indicated something very serious, very unpleasant.

Whatever was going on here, it was bigger than USAC. The crew had not known that beforehand. Dipper wondered if they would develop an increased respect for him. He doubted it.

Lee looked back at Dipper, then at Wendy. From her bunk, Mabel said, "That means top secret, Lee."

Lee looked around at her. "You don't need to tell me about Code Black, Baby Bear." Dipper heard the attempt at joviality in Lee's voice. The rescue tech simply could not sustain it.

Dipper took a deep breath. The crew was finding its own level for this, giving him a chance to go on. He tugged the blanket more tightly around his body, resisting the urge to shiver. "The USAC intercepted a radio transmission from a decaying orbit around Neptune. The source has been identified. . . . . as the Event Horizon.'"

There was dead silence.

Dipper waited. He wished he could hide. This was not his job.

Her eyes flashing as she turned to glare at him, Tambry snapped, "That's impossible!" She looked around the cabin, almost surged forward. "She was lost with all hands, what, seven years ago?"

Mabel winced, all playfulness lost. "Yeah, the reactor blew."

"How can we salvage—" Soos started, turning to Dipper, a confused expression on his face. Dipper knew what Soos had to be thinking: there could be nothing to salvage, aside from a few bits of radioactive debris.

Standing behind Dipper, now leaning closer to him, an angry, threatening presence, Robbie growled, "Let the dead rest, man." Dipper turned to look at Robbie, chills racing up his spine.

Lee was getting wound up now. Dipper turned his attention back to him, hearing him yelling angrily, "… Cancel our leave and send us out on some bullshit mission!" as he waved his fists in the air. He looked as though he was about to slide down from his bunk to stalk furiously around the crew quarters. Dipper did not think that Lee was about to turn violent, but he was no psychologist. He figured that there was no good reason to put theory to the test in this case.

Wendy let the racket go on for a few more moments, then stood up, holding her hands in the air as she bellowed, "Everybody shut up!" Silence fell again.

Dipper's ears were ringing. "Let the man speak."

Wendy sat down again.

Dipper took another deep breath. He hoped that what he was about to say would change the perspective of this crew enough for them to be of use to him in retrieving his ship.

"What was made public about the Event Horizon," Dipper went on, "that she was a deep-space research vessel, that its reactor went critical, that the ship blew up… none of that is true." There was silence now, and he had their undivided attention, having introduced them to the idea of cover-up and conspiracy. That was juicy, something for them to fasten on to. "The Event Horizon was the culmination of a secret government project to create a spacecraft capable of faster-than-light flight."

They were all staring at him again, their expressions shocked. This was not something they had heard about, had not even suspected. It had not been possible to keep the Event Horizon completely secret once the pure development process was over and the construction process began, but it had been possible to keep a lid on the true nature and purpose of the project. There had been a desire for a deep-space research platform after the successes in exploiting the asteroid belt, and the Event Horizon project had played into that, hiding the truth in plain sight. No one had known what might happen.

In the end, no one had known what had happened, out here at Neptune.

Robbie, the ominous edge gone from his voice, said, "You can't do that."

"The law of relativity prohibits faster-than-light travel," Tambry said, before Dipper could answer Robbie. These people were still trying to deal with the concepts and ideas illuminated by Einstein; they were unlikely to reach as high as the work of Hawking, or even Gribbin, probably considering quarks to be the noises made by ducks and tachyons as something you used to hang a picture.

Patiently, Dipper said, "Relativity, yes." He paused for a moment, trying to bring things a bit closer to the level of those he had to deal with. "We can't break the law of relativity, but we can go around it. The ship doesn't really move faster than light"—he gestured with his hands, his blanket becoming more precarious with his motion—"it creates a dimensional gateway that allows the ship to instantaneously jump from one point in the universe to another, light years away."

They were all watching intently now, trying to understand him.

"How?" Tambry asked. Her voice had a glassy edge.

Dipper shrugged. "Well, it's difficult to…" He stopped, feeling helpless as the equations glowed across his mind, a pure blend of mathematics and practical physics. One day he had known how to bend space and had then set out to prove it. "It's all math, you see… but…" He trailed off again, still trying to reduce the concepts. He had cracked the sky. Now he had to explain it to these people. "In layman's terms, you use a rotating magnetic field to focus a narrow beam of gravitons; these in turn fold space-time consistent with Weyl tensor dynamics until the space-time curvature becomes infinitely large and you have a singularity…"

Wendy was staring at him, shaking her head. "'Layman's terms.'"

Dipper closed his eyes momentarily, trying to compose himself.

Lee was lunging over the side of his bunk again. "Fuck 'laymen's terms' man, do you speak English?"

Dipper opened his eyes, sighing. How in the name of hell was he supposed to get these concepts across to people who could barely function without an Ezy-Guide and good fortune? He looked around the cramped crew's quarters, spotting the edge of something, a poster, on the inside of an open locker door.

"Hmm. . . . . Okay, let's try this," he said, reaching out without thinking, and tearing the poster down. The name on the locker door, as it bounced shut, was ROBBIE V. That did not matter now.

"Excuse me…" Robbie started, more shocked at Dipper's abrupt action than outraged at his audacity. Dipper shot him a look, and the pilot took a step backwards, not saying anything else.

Dipper turned back to the other crew members, holding up the poster, making the paper snap in his hands. Doggedly, he said, "Say this paper represents space-time…" He slapped the pinup onto the nearest flat surface then made a half-turn, picking up a pen as he did so. He quickly marked an X on the pinup, putting the letter A at one side. "And you want to get from point A here to point B here." He scribbled another X, this time marked with a B. "Now. What's the shortest distance between two points?"

The crew members stared at him as though he had turned into a raving idiot.

What did they expect? There were non-Euclidian geometries involved here, and many human minds could not go around the requisite corners. He knew that his audience resented being thrown back into grade school, but it was the only way he knew how to get even a fraction of the concepts across.

Finally, Mabel said, "A straight line." She had a confused look, as though she was certain something was missing from the answer. The other crew members turned to stare at the engineer, who proceeded to glare back at them, annoyed and embarrassed. "What?"

"Sorry sis, but wrong," Dipper said, with a sympathetic smile. Everyone turned to stare at the scientist again.

"The shortest distance between two points is zero." He held the poster up, folding it so that the first X was over the second. With a fast, vicious, movement he drove the pen through the layers of paper. Melodramatic but functional; Robbie hadn't even complained about the wanton destruction of his pinup.

He lowered the poster, looking at them intently. "That's what the singularity does—it folds space, so that point A and point B coexist in the same space and time. After the ship passes through this gateway, space returns to normal." He handed the punctured poster back to Robbie, who took it gingerly, looking at Dipper as though the scientist might turn rabid at any moment. "It's called a gravity drive."

Tambry was watching Dipper intently, genuinely curious. "How do you know all this?"

There was the Million Dollar Question. Dipper squared his shoulders and said, "I helped build it."

Lee made a noise that indicated that he was either impressed or coming to a boil. For good measure, he added, "I can see why they sent you along."

Soos was frowning now, though, obviously putting the bits and pieces of information together and coming up with a result he liked less and less with each passing moment. "So if the ship didn't blow up, what happened?"

"The mission was going perfectly," Dipper said, frowning, remembering. "Like a textbook. The ship reached safe distance using conventional thrusters. All the systems looked good." He sat back, his enthusiasm and drive draining as the memories flooded back in. The Event Horizon had torn a hole in the heavens and his life had been sucked into it. "All the systems looked good… they received the go-ahead to activate the gravity drive and open the gateway to Proxima Centauri, the sun's closest star."

Dipper paused for a few moments, lost in the past, replaying those hours, those days in Central Operations. Everything had come crashing down in such a short span of time, taking the foundations of his entire life.

"She vanished from all our scopes. Disappeared without a trace." He paused, looked at Wendy. The Captain was watching him intently. "Until now."

Wendy grimaced, but her eyes were full of curiosity. She needed to know.

"So . . . . Where has it been the past seven years?" Dipper sat back, his blanket forgotten. "That's what we're here to find out."


	3. Chapter 3

The bridge was not a place for fast movement, but Dipper was managing all right, fitting into a corner. Wendy had assumed her throne, of course, but had chosen to sit quietly, listening to all that Dipper had to say without spending her energy to comment. So far. It was obvious to Dipper that Wendy considered het crew to be far more than mere functional appendages.

They had gone as far as possible in the crew quarters, then moved up to the bridge for the second part of the show. If the introduction had rattled the Lewis and Clark's crew, Dipper thought, then the next part would freeze their blood.

"We haven't been able to confirm any live contact," Dipper said, leaning backwards, his arms crossed over his chest, "but the TDRS did receive a single transmission." He felt a little more in control now, a little more together.

He reached out and pressed a key on a nearby computer keypad. The terrifying sound that poured from the bridge speakers had become familiar before leaving Daylight Station, but he could still feel the effects, could still sense the inhuman swirl beneath the static and corruption. Some of the elements rose and fell in a familiar pattern while others seemed to rise and fade in new patterns each time.

Dipper watched their faces as the recording played through, watched them become pale and fearful as they endured the voice of the Event Horizon. The sounds ceased abruptly, causing them to respond with spasmodic physical movements before anyone could gain control of themselves.

They looked at each other, at Dipper.

"The fuck was that?" Robbie whispered, all of his posturing and his energy drained for the moment. He was staring at Dipper like a lost man.

Soos looked up at Wendy, who sat impassively in her chair, then back at Dipper. "It doesn't sound like anything human," Soos said, his words coming slowly.

Dipper nodded. "Houston has passed the recording through several filters and isolated what appears to be a human voice." It was stretching things somewhat to describe that voice as human, he knew, but it seemed to be the best that anyone could do at the time. There had been no communication from Earth regarding further refinements.

Dipper tapped another key. If the first recording had spooked the crew of the Lewis and Clark, this one shook them to the core. It was a howl from a soul abandoned and despairing on the far edge of hell. Dipper felt it in the darker recesses of his soul even now, having heard it several times.

"Jesus," Robbie said. He looked as though the voice had cut straight through him. The other crew members, even Wendy, were having a hard time staying put and listening to the playback. Tambry had her head down, concentrating.

Wendy looked at Dipper, intent.

"We're not even sure that it qualifies as language," Dipper said, as the playback ended.

Tambry looked up at him, his expression dark. "Latin."

Surprised, Dipper raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

Tambry opened her mouth again, then hesitated for a moment, almost looking inward. "I mean…" She took a deep breath. "It sounds like it might be Latin."

Lee stared at Tambry, disbelieving. There was no trace of his sense of humor now. "Latin? Who the fuck speaks Latin?"

Nate looked around at Lee, his lip curling. "No one. It's a dead language."

"Mostly dead," Tambry said, her voice firm. She stared directly at Dipper, who refused to flinch.

Wendy leaned forward, looking down at Tambry. "Can you translate?"

Tambry licked her lips, then said to Dipper, "Play that back, please."

Dipper tapped the key again, and the voice screamed through the room. This time Tambry tried to focus on the voice, tried to sketch words out of the electronic muck.

"Right there," she said, hearing something in the sound. "That sounds like 'liberaté mé.'" She frowned, losing the thread. "I can't make out the rest. It's too distorted."

Wendy leaned forward, now looking at Tambry. "'Liberaté mé'?"

Tambry turned to face Wendy. "'Save me.'"

Lee turned back to Tambry, a dubious expression on his face. "From what?"

Wendy sat back, steepling her hands, her eyes on Dipper. "You're convinced the crew could still be alive?"

"The Event Horizon only had life support for eighteen months," Dipper said, considering the possibilities. He had considered just about everything along the way, including the possibility of some kind of time distortion that might have thrown the Event Horizon seven years forward. "It seems impossible, but in light of the transmission…" He took a deep breath. He had never been able to make the math work for a time distortion. "I have to think that some endured until now."

Lee looked up at Wendy. Some of the playfulness was creeping back into his expressions, his voice. "Red, do we get hazard pay for this?"

"You heard the tape, Lee," Wendy said. The Captain had a wry expression.

"We're looking for survivors."

The bridge was suddenly filled with the sound of a blaring alarm. Wendy looked up, consulting readouts. "Here we go, people," Wendy said. "Stations."

The bridge cleared as Soos, Tambry, and Lee raced back for their standard stations. Dipper clambered down the bridge ladder, heading for the flight seat that had been made ready for him.

Strapping himself in, he noted that he was almost excited. He was coming home to his ship.

His creation.

He smiled.

* * *

><p>Lewis and Clark was closing on Neptune. Wendy looked over the Heads-Up Display on the main window, squinting at the bright blue light pouring in through the thick quartz. It was easier to draw the pertinent data from his own readouts, so she turned her attention to those instead.<p>

Tamby, also ignoring the HUD, announced, "Crossing the horizon. Optimum approach angle is fourteen degrees."

Wendy looked over her instruments and made some quick decisions. Dipper could twist space to his heart's content, she thought, but he could never gut-fly a ship like this one. Wendy was in her element, no matter how far out they were.

Wendy said, "Come around to three-three-four."

Scanning over her displays, she wondered what they were going to find when they met up with the Event Horizon. That gut-wrenching racket Pines had played was an indication that something strange was going on here. As far as Wendy was concerned, second-guessing these situations was a bad idea, sometimes fatal. You could not set expectations and go charging into potentially deadly situations with preconceptions locked into place. You had to be flexible.

Robbie said, "Heading three-three-four."

Wendy felt the ship shifting. "Make your approach vector negative fourteen degrees."

"One-four degrees," Robbie echoed, and Wendy felt the ship adjusting course again. There. She could feel the thrusters moving to new positions, firing a controlled sequence of bursts that would kill some of their velocity and tighten their orbit. There was something else now—a mild vibration that traveled through the frame of the ship. They were starting to encounter the fringes of Neptune's atmosphere and from here onward the journey could turn into quite a roller coaster ride.

Wendy watched her instruments as the Lewis and Clark continued its cautious descent. Blue light was replaced by blue-tinged gloom as methane clouds rushed by the bridge windows. The hull temperature was rising as they ploughed into the atmosphere, but the ablative shielding and heat tiles were holding up beautifully, keeping the heat away from the main body of the ship, but for some reason, Wendy felt cold.


	4. Chapter 4

Graphic images flashed and scattered across the displays, with one significant image locking into the center of the HUD. Wendy scanned this new display with some satisfaction. The information in the display came from the main ID transponder for the Event Horizon, and included the ship's registry codes and other identification.

Tambry said, "We have a lock on the Event Horizon's navigation beacon." She made some quick corrections, focused on her boards. At times like this, Wendy would have sworn that Tambry somehow fused her mind to the main piloting computer. "It's in the upper ionosphere. We are in for some chop."

Some chop. There were times when Tambry displayed a mastery of understatement. "Bring us in tight," Wendy said. "Mabel, how's my ship?"

Mabel was looking from display to display, continually gathering information. She glanced up for a moment, at Wendy. "Everything green on my boards, Red." She turned back to her boards again as the ship shuddered, buffeted by Neptune's outer atmosphere.

Wendy had to wonder how the Event Horizon had managed to stay aloft. As its orbit decayed into the atmosphere, the Event Horizon should have been slowed by friction, pulled down by Neptune's gravity and torn apart before the atmospheric pressure crushed the pieces.

Answers. They needed answers.

"Matching speed… now," Robbie was saying. "Range to target ten thousand meters and closing." The pilot looked up and around at Wendy. Robbie had a worried, almost fearful, expression that told Wendy that Robbie had been asking the same kind of questions about the Event Horizon. "Captain, this is… this is wrong."

Sympathetically but firmly, Wendy said, "We're all on edge, Robbie. We're a long way out."

Robbie shook his head. Wendy could read the tension in the man, watch it ripple under the skin. "That's not it, Captain. That ship was built to go faster than light… that's just wrong."

Wendy did not want to debate the issue or to discuss oddities and fearful symmetries. Robbie was making the mistake of thinking things through. At a time like this, it could lead to disaster.

"Keep us slow and steady," Wendy said, her voice firm. Listening to her, you might have thought she had not heard Robbie.

Robbie knew differently. "Yes, ma'am," he said crisply, turning back to his controls.

Wendy turned to Tambry. "Tambry, get on the horn, see if anyone's listening." She doubted there would be a response, but there were protocols to be followed here.

Tambry's fingers flickered over her boards as her eyes took on a slightly unfocused look. "This is U.S. Aerospace command vessel Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon, Event Horizon, do you read? This is the Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon…"

Wendy shut out the sound of Tambry's voice as she did the contact mantra.

Wendy leaned to the side, looking down in the direction of the extra seat and Dipper Pines. Give the scientist credit, the man had not budged from his position since being sent there.

"Dr. Pines!" Wendy called. Dipper was in the hatchway in a flash, looking up at Wendy with undisguised excitement. It made Wendy feel like a fresh steak placed before a starving dinner guest. "I think you want to see this."

Dipper clambered up the ladder and onto the flight deck, giving every impression of not noticing the shuddering of the ship as it pushed its way through the fringes of the Neptunian atmosphere. The scientist peered through the thick windows, trying to pick out his ship.

"Where is she?" Dipper said. He looked back at Wendy, then at Mabel.

Without turning, Robbie said, "Dead ahead, five thousand meters."

The Lewis and Clark shook violently and rolled sideways. Dipper grabbed a stanchion and braced his feet. Tambry was silent for a moment as Robbie's hands flew over the controls.

"We've got some weather," Robbie muttered. The ship righted itself but continued to vibrate.

"I noticed," Wendy said. She swallowed hard, trying to force her body to relax and quit trying to find a good place to run and hide. Surprises like that were never easy to deal with. They were fine, they were okay, Robbie had it under control. "Tambry, anybody home?"

Tambry looked up, shook her head. "If they are, they're screening then-calls."

"Range three thousand meters and closing," Robbie said.

Dipper was leaning forward, still holding on to the stanchion, peering out through the windows, trying to see past the clouds of methane crystals. "I can't see anything."

Neither could Wendy, who was trying the exterior cameras. The weather was thickening out there, as though trying to force them back, or into a change of course. Compounding the visual difficulties, the camera mounts were icing up as the icy clouds struck. The deicing systems were being hard-pressed to keep pace.

"Fifteen hundred meters," Robbie said, his voice urgent. "We're getting too close."

Wendy looked away from her visual displays, trying to see something through the bridge windows. "Where is it?"

Tambry went over her instruments, shaking her head, punched a control, putting an animated graphic up into the HUD. "The scope is lit. It's right in front of us." The graphic flashed confirmation: something there, something big…

"One thousand meters," Robbie announced. Now his voice held warning. Warning lights flashed red as a shrill beep pulsed through the bridge. The beep vibrated in Wendy's teeth and made her ears hurt.

"Proximity warning!" Mabel called.

Dipper looked back at Wendy, then turned back to the window. Wendy realized that she had begun to hold her breath, waiting. With an effort, she breathed out, making herself breathe normally.

"Nine hundred, eight hundred meters, seven hundred," Robbie was saying, each word harder and harder than the last. "We're right on top of it, Captain, we're gonna hit!"

Tambry whirled, staring at Wendy, waiting for the command to helm that would get them out of there, save their asses.

"Tambry —" Wendy began.

"It should be right there," she said, and turned to point, only to stare in shock as the clouds parted. "My God."

For the first time, Wendy saw the Event Horizon, enormous and dark as it threatened to blot out the blue of Neptune.

"Reverse thrusters full!" Wendy yelled.

Tambry and Robbie complied.

The Lewis and Clark screamed.

The ship bucked and shook, shedding velocity and changing vectors under emergency power. Dipper was almost hurled forward, into the windows, but somehow managed to keep his precarious handhold on the bridge. The hull sounded in response to the thrusters, then settled.

The Event Horizon was a dark blur as the Lewis and Clark' shot past it, with no features instantly visible. Wendy found herself trying to pick details out, but having no luck.

They came around again, cautiously matching velocity, creeping up slowly.

No one spoke. The proximity warning continued to beep.

The Event Horizon could easily have swallowed the Lewis and Clark, taken it in without anyone noticing it. Dipper and his team had created something that was more Gothic monstrosity than spacecraft, a thing of arching girders and strange angles, of darkness and depth that the naked eye and unaided mind could not estimate. The clouds had swirled away around the starship, leaving it at the eye of the storm, but this did not aid in perception.

Wendy stared into this darkness and felt cold. She had never felt cold in space very often. She let her chair down, unbuckled, stepped onto the deck so that she could go forward.

"There she is," Dipper said, pride in his voice. Daddy's little girl is out there, Wendy thought.

Robbie shook his head, his expression unreadable to Wendy. "Can we go home now, please?"

Mabel had gotten herself into a position to see the Event Horizon. She stared for a few moments, his mouth working. Finally, she said, "Whoa. . . . . It's HUGE! Dipper, it's incredible!" Wendy raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic announcement.

"Thank you, Mabel," Dipper said. His voice held an strong sense of pride as a small smile came to his face. Wendy was not sure that she liked his tone, but she understood it.

Wendy stepped forward, leaning over Robbie like a dark spectral presence. She had had enough of that damned proximity alarm now. She reached down and punched the defeat switch, silencing it.

"Range five hundred meters and holding," Robbie said, coming back to business abruptly, a sign of respect for Wendy looming over his shoulder.

"Turbulence is dropping off."

Tambry fingers were dancing over her board. "Picking up magnetic interference. It's playing hell with the IMUs."

"Switch over to the trackers," Wendy said. Tambry's fingers flew again, and readouts changed. Wendy turned to look at Robbie. "Robbie, you up for a flyby?"

"Love to," Robbie said, using his least convincing tone of voice.

His hands moved over the controls. The Lewis and Clark eased into motion, nudged along by gentle taps of the thrusters. Wendy could feel the bursts through her fingers, through her feet, could feel the pulse of the ship and know when there was something wrong.

They came up under the Event Horizon, looking into the belly of the beast.

Seeing this craft was providing Wendy with a different perspective on Dipper Pines. She suspected that someone had had the idea to make the ship large and comfortable, a workplace, for interstellar crews who might spend a great deal of time researching newly discovered worlds.

To Wendy's eyes, the Event Horizon was a dark Industrial Revolution monstrosity, wrought from iron and powered by coal, a foul juggernaut tearing the heavens apart and polluting the remnants with its effluvium. This was not a ship that was easy to knock down.

Robbie concentrated on his controls, using the displays where needed, refusing to look at the ship they were passing.

"Look at the size of that thing," Mabel muttered.

Dipper moved forward, leaning over Robbie and Tambry, ignoring Robbie's warning glare. "Can we move in closer?"

"Any closer and we're gonna need a rubber," Robbie growled.

Wendy's eyes narrowed. It was time to face the beast. They had a job to do here. "Do it," she said.

Robbie frowned angrily. His hands floated over the controls.

Another course change, a bit more abrupt than required. The Lewis and Clark drifted in towards the Event Horizon, falling into shadow. Wendy felt the cold creep into her again, and she wondered what they were getting themselves into here.

Something spherical loomed within the shadows, in the heart of the starship. An arm jutted from the sphere, covered in small pods, dishes and antenna elements.

Dipper leaned forward, focusing, pointing. "There's the main airlock. We can dock there."

Wendy pulled her attention away from the spherical structure and turned to Robbie. "Robbie, use the arm and lock us onto that antenna cluster."

Robbie nodded. He flicked controls, switching his monitors over to a view from the main camera on the Lewis and Clark's boom arm. Cautiously, he nudged the salvage ship in toward the airlock, killing excess velocity with little blips on the thrusters.

Slipping his right hand into a waldo glove, Robbie extended the boom towards the Event Horizon. Wendy watched over Robbie's shoulder, intent on the pilot's work. Dipper, in the meantime, was watching out of the main windows, trying to pick out the details.

Floating the arm by the antenna cluster, Robbie spread his fingers in the glove. The end of Robbie's boom spread open like a flower, the mechanical hand spreading wide. Carefully, Robbie floated the hand in towards his target, touched it.

His hand closed in the glove. On the monitor, the mechanical fingers closed around the main part of the antenna cluster, buckling it.  
>"Be careful, would you?", Dipper said, turning to Robbie. "It's not a load-bearing structure."<p>

Robbie slipped his hand from the waldo glove and looked up at Dipper, his expression dismissive. "It is now." He turned to Wendy, the attitude vanishing. "Locked in, Red."

Wendy nodded, turned her head. "Tambry, give me a read."

Tambry's displays lit, flashed with data, stopping and starting at Tambry's tapped-in commands. Wendy liked it a lot when her crew was efficient and smart.

"The reactor's still hot," Tambry said, looking over her screens. "We've got several small radiation sources, leaks, probably. Nothing serious."

Wendy tried to make sense of the displays herself, but the angle was wrong and all she got was a strained neck muscle. "Do they have pressure?"

Tambry nodded. "Yes, ma'am. The hull's intact, but there's no gravity and the thermal units are offline. I'm showing deep cold. The crew couldn't survive unless they were in stasis."

Even then, the odds are lousy, Wendy thought. She smoothed at her hair, refusing to jump to conclusions until all the evidence was in. "Find 'em, Tambry."

"Already on it," Tambry said, her fingers moving over her console.

"Bio-scan is online." She was silent for a few moments, looking over her displays, mentally organizing the data. Wendy expected her to come up with an answer any moment now. Instead, she frowned, uncertain. "Something's wrong with the scan."

Wendy leaned further down, trying to take a closer look.

Dipper was hanging back, trying once again to stay out of the way. "Radiation interference?" Wendy said.

Tambry shook her head and bit her lip as she looked over the displays, calling up different readouts. "There's not enough to throw it off. I'm picking up trace life forms, but I can't get a lock on the location."

Wendy looked around as Dipper took a step toward them. "Could it be the crew? If they were in suspended animation, wouldn't that affect the scan?"

"I'd still get a location," Tambry said, turning away from the frustration of her displays, "but these readings, they're all over the ship. It doesn't make any sense."

Wendy straightened up, squaring her shoulders. "Okay, we do it the hard way." She looked from Tambry to Dipper, back to Tambry again. "Deck by deck, room by room. Tambry, deploy the umbilicus." Wendy turned around, found her next target down at the engineering console. "I believe you're up for a walk, Miss Pines. Go get your bonnet on."

Mabel displayed an unseemly level of enthusiasm for this suggestion, snapping back with a crisp, "Yes, ma'am!" before leaving her station and heading for the hatch.

Dipper started to follow his sister off the bridge, hurrying to keep up with her.

"Doctor," Wendy said, firmly. Dipper stopped and turned, giving Wendy an impatient look. "Stay here on the bridge. Once the ship—"

"Captain," Dipper interrupted, coming closer to Wendy, his face set and his attitude filled with a desire for argument, "I didn't come out here to sit on your bridge. I need to be on my ship."

Wendy took a deep breath, trying to squeeze the tension from muscles that had no desire to be untensed. "Once the ship is secured, we'll bring you on board—"

Sharply, Dipper said, "That's unacceptable."

Wendy hissed in frustration. "Once we've secured the ship," she said, and now her temper was certainly fraying, "that's the way it is!"

Dipper glared at her in abject silence. Wendy let him have a few breaths to get used to the idea of defeat, then added, "I need you to guide us from the comm station. This is where I need you. Help us to do our job."

Dipper breathed out, relaxing. Wendy felt relieved. While she expected Dipper to be aboard the Event Horizon sooner or later, she much preferred it to be later. The last thing they needed was for the main designer of the ship to be stomping around, getting in the way and giving orders no one could follow.

"Fine," Dipper said, and he went to sit down.

Wendy headed for the hatch.


	5. Chapter 5

Down in the airlock bay, Wendy watched the monitors while Tambry deployed the umbilicus, carefully extending the heavy plastic tube from the Lewis and Clark to the Event Horizon, locking the docking collar in place over the outer door. At least Dipper and his team had done something that followed standard protocols. Wendy's crew could have managed without using the umbilicus, but their lives would have been far more complicated.

Wendy turned away from the monitors as Lee, behind her, said, "Come on, Red, I already put my shoes on." It was a bit more than his shoes, Wendy noted. Lee was ready to hit space at a moment's notice—all he needed to do was get his helmet in place.

Wendy was already fully rigged for EVA, as were Soos and Mabel, the bulky suits making it a little difficult for them to move in the airlock bay.

Lee dropped Wendy's helmet into place, sealing it securely. Lee seemed to have an almost infinite capacity for extra-vehicular activity. A liking for EVA was a rare thing even in the Big Rock Range, where being outside was a daily occurrence.

"You've had plenty EVA, Lee," Wendy said, het voice muffled by the helmet. "It's Mabel's turn. Stay on station. If anything happens…"

Lee was all serious business. "I'll be all over it."

Nate finished checking over Soos and Mabel for problems with their suits.

He walked over to Wendy, checking seams and connectors, confirming the helmet seal.

"Any survivors are gonna be hot," Wendy said to Nate.

He nodded. "Radiation I can handle." He finished his check of Wendy's suit and stepped back. "It's the dead ones I can't fix."

That's all we're probably bringing back for you, Wendy thought, turning away from Nate and nodding to Soos.

"Opening inner airlock door," Soos said, doubly muffled through two layers of helmet. He turned and tapped the control panel in the airlock door.

There was a resounding clank as the main lock disengaged, allowing the door to slide open.

Wendy stepped into the airlock, followed closely by Mabel and Soos.

Mabel turned as she entered the airlock, pulling out the end of a safety line and attaching it to an eyebolt on her suit. Lee had followed them, still making visual safety checks—one of the reasons Wendy respected the man, despite the smart-ass approach to life—and smiled now at seeing Mabel setting up a safety line.

"You still need the rope?" Lee said to Mabel, even as he reached out to check the integrity of the line and its connection to the eyebolt. "I thought you were one of those spacemen with ice in your veins."

Mabel tugged on the rope, getting an approving nod from Lee. "I'd rather be on the rope and not need it," she said, as she tensed the line a little more, "than need it and not have it. Now step aside, old man."

Lee made a face at this. In a serious voice, Lee said, "You just keep your nose clean. Baby Bear. Clear the door."

With a wave, Lee backed out of the airlock. The door rolled shut, the locks engaging with a hollow boom that resonated through the ship. Warning lights flicked on. Through her helmet, Wendy could hear the low hissing of air being evacuated from the airlock.

She pressed back against the airlock wall, waiting. The seconds ticked away.

Silence around them. The cotton-wool feeling of vacuum, shot through with the sounds of the suit systems, electronics, and electrics warming and cooling, air aspirating through the suit ventilators, odd creaking sounds from the material.

The outer airlock door opened. Light poured in from the umbilicus.

Wendy turned and stepped out, launching herself.

Tambry had indicated that Dipper should follow her down into the lower level of the bridge area. He saw no reason to object to this slight change of environment, so he did as she requested.

Waving him to the seat usually occupied by the Mabel, Tambry sat down and started activating monitors and consoles around them. Dipper turned his head, taking in the different displays. Three of them were direct video feeds.

Time code, and names had been overlaid in the lower right corner; the monitor for Wendy's video feed was directly in front of Dipper.

At the moment, the feeds showed only the featureless interior of the umbilicus. Once in a while a figure would drift into range.

Next to Dipper, Tambry said, "Video feed is clear."

Robbie climbed down behind them, his eyes on the monitors.

"Are you with us, Dr. Pines?" Wendy, made tinny and distant by the radio system.

Something looming up on the monitors now. Dipper was beginning to react with excitement as Wendy, Mabel, and Soos closed on the Event Horizon. He should have been with them, but he could not win every battle. Perhaps it was to the good—let the professionals face any initial danger, and then go in to open up all the secrets hidden within the ship.

Dipper focused intently on the monitors now. "I'm with you," he said. "You've reached the outer airlock door."

Wendy did not waste time with the Event Horizon's outer airlock door, motioning for Mabel to get it open in a hurry. She quickly complied.

Soos pushed by her, then, getting a thumper up against the inner airlock door. The device emitted bursts of sound, measuring the return response.

Soos scanned over the readouts. "We've got pressure," he said, putting the thumper away on his belt.

"Clear and open," Wendy said. She and Soos got out of Mabel's way.

Mabel floated up to the inner airlock door, turning herself carefully. She reached to het utility belt, extracting a slim tool, inserting this into the airlock operations panel. The inner airlock door opened slightly. Particles swirled through the gap— crystals of ice, frozen dust, more that they would have needed additional equipment to identify. Atmosphere from the Event Horizon would fill the umbilicus, helping to keep it stable as long as the docking ring seal remained intact.

Mabel continued working. The inner airlock door opened all the way, a doorway into pitch darkness.

Mabel stowed her tool and checked his line as Wendy led the way into the Event Horizon. Their helmet lights caught ice crystals whirling in the silent darkness, and light scattered around them, only to be swallowed in the darkness.

Wendy glanced around, trying to get some sort of perspective. As far as she could tell, they had stepped into some kind of access corridor, but the corridor was seemingly endless, an immense pool of darkness broken once,in a while by a deep blue patch of light that he assumed resulted from windows filtering the light from Neptune.

She looked up. Somewhere far over her head, her helmet light reflected from a ceiling. She could have used a hundred times the candlepower, she realized.

The lights they had with them would show them almost nothing.

"Geez," Soos said as Wendy looked around. "It's huge."

Trying to wrench her mind away from the scale of the starship, Wendy said, "Ice crystals everywhere. This place is a deep freeze." That was more for Dipper's benefit than anyone else's.

Dipper's voice was in Wendy's head now, courtesy of the suit radio. "You're in the central corridor. It connects the personnel areas to engineering."

Wendy was about to suggest they pick a direction when her attention was taken by something hovering just at the edge of her field of vision. "Hold on a second," she said, quietly and firmly. She started to crane her head forward, around. "Everybody hold your position."

Mabel and Soos froze where they were. "What is it?" Mabel said.

"I don't know," Wendy said, edging around, trying not to move too fast.

Small objects afloat in microgravity tended to prove all three of Newton's laws of motion. One too-quick move here and they would be chasing this particular mystery down the length of the corridor.

Wendy edged down, closer, focusing on the object. It was small and white.

A human tooth, complete with the root.

Shocked, Wendy said, "Nate?"

Nate was normally unflappable, but his voice was shaky now. "I, uh, think it's a right, rear molar."

Wendy rolled her eyes. Time for the pragmatic voice. "Yeah, thanks, I can see it's a tooth." Yes, Nate, she thought, this is not what we were looking for here.

"Looks like it was pulled out by the root," Nate added helpfully. This was not the sort of statement Wendy wanted to have made dead-center in her head. As it was, Wendy's spine was chilling.

This was not getting off to a good start.

"Come on," Robbie said, looking away from the monitors. "What is that all about?"

Dipper and Tambry were both staring at the bizarre image on the monitor displaying Wendy's video feed. The tooth floated there lazily in midair, flecked with frozen blood and little bits of flesh.

Dipper felt as though he had entered a timeless place, one where the shadows lengthened and the light twisted all the images. His dreams came back to him, haunting. Whatever had happened to the Event Horizon seven years ago, it was beginning to seem that the end result was catastrophic and Lee had arrived at the flight deck now, nudging Robbie aside as he leaned between Tambry and Dipper to stare at the monitors. "This is some weird voodoo shit!" the rescue tech exclaimed, shaking his head. Dipper looked at Lee, then turned back to the monitor, wondering what sort of answer he could have given him.  
>Tambry gave Lee an annoyed glance. "Get back to your post, Lee."<p>

Dipper wondered whether it mattered if Lee spent his time here on the bridge or down in the airlock bay playing doorman. Lee did not stick around to debate the point, leaving the bridge after a curt nod to Tambry.

The image on Wendy's monitor shifted.

Wendy stood up straight, stretching her arms out, the motion sending the vagrant tooth spinning away down the corridor. This mission was beginning to give her the creeps, and that was just not acceptable.

"All right, all right," she said, pushing her feelings aside and trying to regain her professional demeanor, "let's move on. Soos and I will search the forward decks." She turned to look at Mabel, who was trying to follow the progress of the flying tooth. "Mabel, take engineering. Don't forget to breathe."

Mabel turned her head. Wendy could just about see her smiling through the faceplate. "I won't, ma'am."

Wendy and Soos started cautiously down the corridor. If Wendy had her bearings right, they would eventually arrive at the bridge. In contrast, Mabel tackled the travel issue by kicking off-hard, aiming for a wall, turning over in midflight, and kicking off from there to increase her momentum. She vanished down the corridor, trailing line.

Wendy shook her head, smiling. Mabel was good, but she was impetuous.

She passed through an archway, surprised at the suggestion of Gothic design here. It took Wendy a moment to realize that the archway disguised a join in the corridor—sections of the main corridor had been joined together this way, rather than simply being welded or bolted. She stopped and turned carefully, inspecting the coupling.

Near the floor, a box caught her attention. There was an explosives symbol on the cover.

"Dr. Pines," Wendy said, slowly, "what's this?"

Before Weir could answer, Soos said, "Here's another one." He was at another coupling, hovering over another of the boxes. He pointed towards the other side of the corridor. "They're all over the place."

Looking around, Wendy could pick out those within range of her helmet light. They nestled into the couplings at floor or ceiling level, looking for all the world like mechanical molluscs.

"They're explosive charges," Dipper said, finally.

Wendy sighed, shaking her head. "I can see that. What are they for?"

"In an emergency, they destroy the central corridor and separate the personnel areas from engineering. The crew could use the foredecks as a lifeboat."

This made sense to Wendy, though she had some difficulty seeing it from an aesthetic point of view—all this immensity, this grandeur, and the panic button led to a collection of explosives out in the open. The Event Horizon had been the prototype. Not everything gets covered up in a prototype.

Wendy joined Soos and they began moving down the corridor again. "That means they didn't abandon ship," Soos said.

Wendy was looking around again, trying to figure out what was really wrong here. "So where are they?" she asked.

No answers were forthcoming.


	6. Chapter 6

_Ok, I have to thank EZB for all his awesome reviews! You rock man! And if you wanna read a badass Gravity Falls story, check out his story, "Return to Gravity Falls"! It is awesome beyond belief, and one of my personal favorites! Once again, I own nothing. If I did. Sam and Dean Winchester would have made an appearance in the show by now._

* * *

><p>Dipper scanned the monitors with an almost boyish enthusiasm, concentrating mainly on the feeds from Wendy and Soos—right now, Mabel's progress was more dizzying than informative.<p>

Wendy and Soos had reached the Event Horizon's Gravity Couch Bay. This would be one of the places they would find any crew members in suspended animation. Against all reason, Dipper held out hope that they would find someone alive.

Soos said, "We found the Gravity Couches." The radio link made his voice tinny.

There were eighteen Couches in the bay, nine on each of the two walls, all essentially the same in form, size, and function as those on the Lewis and Clark. The bay itself was considerably larger, of course, but everything aboard the Event Horizon was designed to be on the large side.

"Any crew?" Dipper asked, as Soos and Wendy each walked along a row of Gravity Couches.

"Negative," Wendy said.

Dipper sat back, drained, empty. It was hopeless, then. No one left alive, no easy route to the answers. They had to know. There must be something aboard the ship….

The video monitor showed nothing but one empty Gravity Couch after another.

They gave no sign of having been used. Dipper shook his head, trying to will something into being there.

"They're empty, Dr. Pines," Wendy said.

Dipper's fists clenched. Hopeless. Everything he had done ended up in a condition of hopelessness. He looked up, looked into the darkness of the Event Horizon and tried to think of something, but he could not get the focus now, could not bring anything back to mind.

"Tambry," Wendy continued, "any luck with that scan?"

Tambry's hands were playing over the console in front of her. Dipper turned his head to look at her and saw frustration written in lines and knots in her face.

"I'm running diagnostics now, Captain." She shook her head again, glaring at the readouts. "Nothing's wrong with the sensor pack. I'm still getting trace life readings all over the ship."

That should have been impossible, Dipper reflected. Wendy knew that too, going by the tinny sigh over the radio link.

A change in the frantic movement on Mabel's monitor drew Dipper's attention away from Tambry's predicament. Mabel had given up her fastball flying technique now, in favor of more considered movement. As Dipper watched, the image from Mabel's camera stabilized and focused. Dipper smiled, though it was an empty smile. Mabel was about to encounter one of the truths of the Event Horizon.

Mabel stood before an immense dark door, perhaps the biggest pressure door she had ever seen in her life. Despite herself, she was extremely impressed. As it was, it was big. Goddamned big. Huge, in fact.

Cheerfully, she said, "It looks like I've reached the First Containment door."

"The engineering decks are on the other side," Dipper answered. Mabel felt a flash a slight flash of annoyance at her brother. Dipper might be one of the most brilliant minds ever to juggle an equation, but he was really condescending when he felt like it.

Mabel did not bother to acknowledge Dipper's statement. She reached out and touched the access panel at her right hand side. The door opened with ponderous grace.

Mabel was delighted to see yet more mystery revealed behind this First Containment door. She moved forward to see more clearly, and to give her camera a better chance to pick up what she was seeing. She was looking into a long corridor section, tube-shaped. The engineers who had built the ship had, for some arcane reason, set this section of corridor to spinning like a turbine, a shell outside the access tube whirling at dizzying speed. From Mabel's vantage point, it looked as though alternating sections were spinning in different directions. There was surprisingly little noise, but she figured most of it operated in vacuum to cut down on friction.

Her head spun as she tried to focus on this weird assembly. Finally, she looked away, trying to get her bearings back. "Cool," she said. "What's all this do?"

Dipper said, "It allows you to enter the Second Containment without compromising the magnetic fields."

Okay, so you're into big showy rigs. Mabel suspected that the same result could have been achieved with half the equipment and a quarter of the power, but she wasn't the one who had the brain the size of Betelgeuse.

"Looks like a ginormous meatgrinder," she said, and stepped forward, her breath echoing in her helmet.

"Dr. Pines, what's this door?" Soos asked.

He had continued all the way down the main corridor until the corridor had ended in a pressure door. He played his helmet light over it, over the walls and floor nearby. Nothing to be seen.

"You're at the bridge, Mr. Soos," Dipper said over the radio link.

He took a deep breath and started to reach for the door controls.

Wendy passed through a hatchway into what appeared to be some kind of medical facility, either the operating theater or some kind of surgical lab.

All of the tables were empty, reflecting het helmet light, and as she turned her head she caught glimpses of surgical instruments and equipment floating aimlessly in the microgravity.

"I'm in Medical," she said, ducking out of the way of a wandering forceps.

She continued her exploration, moving cautiously through the room, inspecting everything. "No casualties. It looks like this place hasn't been used."

Secured drug lockers, empty biohazard and sharps containers, just an ugly assortment of floating hardware to contend with. Wendy's skin was crawling with cold. She was beginning to think Robbie was right, that they should not have come here.

Over the radio link, Dipper said, "You still haven't seen any crew?"

"If we saw any crew, Doctor, you'd know about it." She turned her head, looked down at the floor, looking for clues and coming up with nothing. Under her breath she muttered, "This place is a tomb."

She took a step forward.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"Fuck!" Wendy yelled, whirling, her hands coming up, ready to strike out.

An empty glove drifted past her faceplate, tumbling slowly. She stared at it as it floated away. Her heart was thundering in het chest and her breathing was roaring in her ears.

"Wendy?" Tambry was demanding over the radio link. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, the words coming as a reflex. She slowed her breathing, tried to get her heart to slow down to a more normal rate. She could feel the clamminess of sweat on her skin, cooled by the air circulating through her suit.

"Your pulse is elevated," Nate said over the radio link. "Are you sure you're—"

"I'm fine," Wendy snapped, which put a stop to any further questions from Nate.

She turned, pushing the fright to the back of her mind. Only inanimate objects, nothing more. Finding a computer console, she set to work. She had had enough of fishing around in the dark. They needed light, air, warmth.

She settled in to start hacking into the ship's systems.

Dipper hunched over in his seat, his hands clenched into fists. He stared at the monitors, but nothing new was revealed.

"Where are they?" he whispered.

Tambry turned to him, her face set. "If anyone's there to be saved, Wendy's going to save them. No one's got more hands-on experience in this. She's one of the few captains who've ever worked the Outer Reach."

That got Dipper's attention for the moment. "She's been past Mars?"

Tambry turned her head, checking displays. "Yep. She served on the Goliath."

Dipper shuffled information in his mind. "The Goliath? Wasn't that ship destroyed in a fire?"

"They were trying to rescue a supply shuttle bound for Titan," Tambry said, slowly. "The freighter's tanks ruptured, flooded both ships with pure oxygen."

That was one of the great spacer nightmares: a ship filled with oxygen was a deathtrap about to happen. "Wendy and three others barely made it to a lifeboat. If not for Wendy, no one would have made it."

Dipper gazed at her, thoughtful. Wendy was strong, then, resourceful. That was good.

Wasn't it?

Soos had managed to open the hatch to the bridge. Taking a deep breath, he eased inside, glancing quickly around.

"Okay," he said, "I'm on the bridge."

He moved slowly around, finding a briefing table and several chairs. This was an antechamber to the bridge, a small briefing room that the crew would have used for mission discussions and assignments. He looked over the table and chairs but found no indication that they had ever been used.

There was a brilliant flash of lightning, storm activity going on in the atmosphere of the planet beneath them. He started to look up, but the flash had thrown off his night vision for a few moments.

He turned to move deeper into the bridge, leaving behind, high up on a wall, unnoticed, a frozen mass of blood and tissue that had once been a living human being.

Wendy worked at the science station for a couple of minutes, and was suddenly rewarded by displays lighting up. She smiled to herself. Something was finally going the way she wanted it. This was something she could deal with.

Pausing for a moment, she said, "The science workstation has power. I'll see if I can find the crew from here."

She got back to work.

"We're not going to find anyone," Robbie said to Tambry, his face an angry mask. "This place is dead."

Dipper ignored him, ignored Wendy's monitor and focused on his sister's continuing walk into engineering.

Suddenly, he said "Mr. Soos," Dipper said softly, "turn back and to your left, please."

He watched as Soos's camera view moved, bringing something new into view.

Tambry leaned over, peering at the monitor, then at Dipper. "What is it?"

"Ship's log," Dipper said.

"I see it," Soos said, and the view on his monitor shifted again.

Soos stepped toward the log unit. It was really nothing more than a small videodisc unit built into one of the consoles, but it was enough to keep a running record of bridge and ship activities.

He reached down and pressed the eject tab. Nothing happened. He leaned down, checked that it was receiving power. A small green light was glowing in one corner of the operations panel. He tried the eject button again, without success.

"It's stuck," he said.

He reached down to his utility belt, extracting a small probe. Carefully, he slipped the probe into the video unit, feeling around until he was sure he had the eject mechanism. He pressed down, pulled back, felt something give.

A tiny laserdisc emerged halfway from the unit, jamming there. Soos grasped it carefully and pulled, but the disc would not move any further. He tugged again, frustrating himself in the effort.

"It's really jammed in there, dude!" he said.

He sighed, then growled softly. They needed that disc, needed it badly. It might well answer a lot of the questions about the fate of the crew. It might even answer some of the questions about the disappearance of the Event Horizon. All things considered, he would be glad to see Dipper's mind put at ease.

He tried the probe again, trying to pull the laserdisc away from whatever part of the mechanism was jamming it in place. This did not seem to help. Once again he grasped the disc and pulled, was frustrated, tugged harder, thought he had it this time, but didn't.

All the air rushing out of him in one explosive gasp, he put all of his strength into getting the disc loose. This time it came free, sending him spinning and tumbling in the microgravity.

He flung an arm out, trying to stabilize himself long enough to get back to a position where he might be able to stop his motion. His heart leapt into his mouth as his helmet lights flashed on something floating in the bridge with him.

He turned helplessly, only to find himself being struck by something with considerable mass. Holding on to the laserdisc with his right hand, he reached out with his left, grasping cloth and, beneath that, something hard.

A face came into view, lit brightly by his helmet lamps. A man's face, contorted, mouth open, swollen tongue protruding. The veins stood out, bloated and frozen, all over his face and neck.

He stared for a moment, his breath catching in his throat. He pushed away from the body, rebounded from a wall, managed to bounce himself down to the deck, catching hold of the edge of a console to stop himself from moving any further.

His tone utterly professional, he said, "I found one." His heart was pounding, but it did not feel as though he was in any danger of his control slipping. Good enough.

Over the radio link, Wendy said, "Alive?"

"Corpsicle," he said.

He lifted his head, aiming his lights up at the floating corpse. Anchoring himself against one of the console units, he reached up, snagging the corpse by a foot, pulling it down.

Dipper sat back now, regarding the face of the dead man on Soos's monitor.

Whoever he was, he was a mess, and they'd be lucky to identify him easily.

Nate came into the bridge, joining Dipper and Tambry at the monitors.

"What happened to his eyes?" Robbie said, staring at the screen.

"Explosive decompression," Tambry said.

Nate shook his head. "Decompression wouldn't do that."

Dipper had to agree there. The dead man's eyes had been gouged out, going by the images.

That would have to wait for the time being. Mabel had finished her long walk.


	7. Chapter 7

Mabel walked slowly out of the spinning tube, her head filled with an annoying buzz that she knew she would not be rid of for some time. She looked around, finding herself in some kind of operational alcove that opened out into a huge spherical chamber.

It was not easy to see anything. Her helmet light reflected from a gray slick that seemed to coat everything in the alcove. She had only a moment to try and figure out which way to turn before something wet and massy struck her suit. Liquid gray shot up in front of her faceplate, out in front of her hands, splashing over her fingers. Other floating globules of liquid caught the light from her helmet.

Then her light was gone, coated by the same thick gray fluid as a another globule struck her helmet.

She reached up, trying to clear the stuff from her helmet. She managed to get some of her light back, but it was very little help. This was already trouble, and not likely to get much better if she stayed in here.

For the benefit of those on the bridge, she said, "I'm in the Second Containment. There must have been a coolant leak." She wiped at her faceplate and helmet lights again. Looking around, she was able to get an idea of just how much of the gray stuff was actually hanging in the air. Fluid in microgravity was a menace. "Man, this stuff is everywhere. I can't see a thing."

That wasn't quite true. There was a console nearby, facing out into the larger chamber. She could, see some dim lights on the board, beneath the muck.

She floated herself over to it, batting balls of coolant out of the way, mainly causing them to become smaller balls of coolant. Grabbing the edge of the console with one hand, she hauled herself down, anchoring herself as best she could while she used one glove to wipe coolant away from the console. She tried not to think about the radiation level.

Her attempt at cleanup yielded good results. The board was alive and functional, operating in standby mode. She tapped keypads and was rewarded by the appearance of a variety of readouts.

"The reactor's still hot," she said, putting pieces together as she gathered data from the console. "Coolant level is on reserve, but within the safe-line."

She tapped in more commands.

The lights came up abruptly, almost blinding her. "I did it!" she crowed, feeling pleased with herself for a moment. "Yeah! Go, Mabel! Go, Mabel! Whoo! Who did it?! This girl!"

The air was thick with lead-gray balls of coolant. She looked around, finding that the viscous fluid had indeed coated just about every surface.

She turned her attention away from the control area and looked out towards the larger chamber. That chamber had lit up too, lights coming on at all angles.

Mabel stood and stared for a few moments, her mouth hanging open in awe.

She had expected a large open area here, but this was off the scale. There were baseball stadiums smaller than the Second Containment. The curving walls rose for dozens of meters overhead, sank for dozens of meters below, a rippling darkness studded with the spiky forms of control rods.

"Holy sprinkles," Mabel said, trying to take it all in.

At the center of the Second Containment, as black as midnight, was an unholy-looking construction. Mabel estimated it to be at least ten meters in diameter, perhaps larger, a broad torus covered on the outside by a series of spikes, occupied on the inside by a huge dark sphere that resembled nothing more than a rotted, mottled orange. Trying to make sense of the construction, Mabel felt her sense of perspective being twisted around. She felt faintly sick.

Parts of the device seemed to be moving, shifting, the surfaces slick and oily. She had the feeling that there was enormous power here. Time and space were under siege.

Her gut clenched.

"Mabel?" It was Lee. The voice jolted her back into place, letting her grasp her professional state of mind.

"I think I found something," she said.

She could not stop staring.

Tambry, Dipper, and Robbie were huddled around the monitor carrying Mabel's video feed. For a while the images had been smeary, thanks to the coolant, but Mabel had managed to remove most of it, clearing the image up considerably.

The addition of decent amounts of light had helped.

Dipper felt relaxed. The Event Horizon was not in the best shape, but it was still flightworthy, perhaps even capable of carrying out its intended function of warp flight.

"What is that?" Tambry asked, pointing at the construction in the middle of the screen. It was tricky to watch—even seen through a relatively poor vid feed, the device seemed to shift and twist, playing hell with rational perspective.

Dipper sat forward, not bothering to hide the pleasure he felt in his creation. "That's the Core—the gravity drive. The heart of the ship."

Robbie turned to look at Dipper. "You built that?"

"Yep. Impressed?"

Robbie was silent for a long moment, watching Dipper. "You didn't have a very happy childhood, did you?"

Mabel eased past the main console, and down onto the gantry that led out into the center of the Second Containment. From this point of view, the containment unit was even more impressive, even if it did feel a little like being on the inside of the universe's biggest Iron Maiden.

She looked upward, having to strain to do so, seeing lights overhead that appeared to be barely more than twinkles in the night. She had to wonder at the design ethic behind all of this—her brother and his team had to have lived by night alone to have created something as grim as this section.

She did not want to consider what it took to create something like the strangeness lurking in the heart of this darkness. The human mind was not meant to go around such corners, even if the corporeal form could make the journey. She was used to the notion of crossing between the worlds, but this was a doorway it would be safer not to go through.

She closed on the construction, focusing on the sphere inside the torus.

Something rippled across the surface, vanished, rippled again. The last thing they needed now was for this thing to crack open and spill itself all over the ship.

"I think I see something," she said, and reached down to her belt, pulling out a tool, a sensor unit that would give her a better idea as to whether or not there was a rupture in the Core.

He leaned in toward the Core.

Tambry jerked back, startled as Mabel's monitor went to static. The radio link hissed like a snakepit for a moment, before the filters cut in and squelched the racket.

"Hold on a sec," Tambry said. She did something with the console, but Dipper could not get a clear view. "You're breaking up."

The monitor cleared for a moment, then static took it again. Dipper gave Tambry a worried look.

Mabel activated the sensor unit, trying to maintain her position as she pushed it out toward the Core.

There was a hiss of static in her earphones, then Dipper's voice breaking through for a moment "… Mabel … ?" His voice vanished again.

Her helmet light flickered off, on, dimmed down. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should deal with it before going on. Probably just a result of the coolant splashing into her helmet, either the lamp terminals or the battery unit getting crocked by the flying sludge. She reached up and tapped the lamp.

"Mabel, come in," Dipper was repeating. Tambry sat silently now, watching, while Robbie leaned down between them, his face ashen.

There was a beep from the console next to Tambry, startling Dipper. Tambry looked around. The bio-scan display, frustrating in its quiescence until now, was displaying readings into the red sector of the scale.

Something was awry, Dipper thought. Then again, something had been awry with this mission since they had located the Event Horizon.

"What is it?" Dipper said.

Tambry shook her head, going over the displays. "I don't know. The life readings just went off the scale."

"Something's wrong," Robbie said, his voice forceful. Dipper almost spoke up in agreement, but chose to remain silent instead. "Pull them out."

Dipper looked at Tambry.

Tambry said nothing.

Mabel's monitor flared with static.

She pressed the sensor unit up against the side of the spherical unit.  
>She had expected it to be a firm contact, but the surface felt soft, spongy, almost as though it was composed of some kind of organic material.<p>

The shifting sensation stopped.

Mabel looked up from the sensor.

In front of her, the Core darkened, somehow taking on the color of nothingness. All around, the containment unit seemed to be sharper, clearer, as though everything around her had focused, revealing incredible amounts of detail. Even the arm of her suit, the hand held out with the pressure sensor against the Core, had an unreal clarity.

Mabel was aware of light. There was no sound.

Then the power, a force beyond reckoning that reached around her, intruded into her universe, enveloping her without pause for consent or complaint.

The void rose up around her, embracing.

Unresisting, Mabel fell into the space between the worlds and was gone.

Reality began to tremble around the Core.


	8. Chapter 8

Lee was not in the mood for this, not in the slightest. _Baby Bear, you'd better be kidding me…._

Mabel's safety line was unreeling at an insane, impossible rate. Lee had tracked the line usage from the start, watched it pay out fast and slow.

Now it was paying out at a rate the counter had problems tracking.

"Three-fifty meters, four hundred meters," he read off. He grabbed his helmet, got it on, the adrenaline starting to pump now. Mabel was in trouble.

Nate helped Lee seal the helmet down. A quick suit check, a thumbs-up.

"I'm gone!" Lee yelled, slapping the control to open the inner airlock door. His heart was pounding and he felt crazy. He hated this more than anything. When it was over, all he would want to do was throw up and shake.

Right now there was no time to think.

The inner airlock door closed behind him. The outer door hissed open.

Shutting his mind off, he dove into the umbilicus.

_Hold on, Baby Bear_, he thought frantically, _Papa Bear's coming to get you._

Like a nightmare, the Event Horizon loomed up ahead of him.

He plunged into the airlock.

Darkness rolled out, folded in upon itself. The safety line going into the Core tightened, then rippled, as though refracted through water.

Space contracted, expanded.

Reality warped, a wave traveling silently out from the Core. Light bent.

The wave passed through the Second Containment walls as though they were air.

Swept into the antechamber, pushing coolant away and into the walls, the console. Debris erupted, slammed into walls, floor, ceiling, ricocheted away as the wave passed.

Swept outward, down the main corridor. Windows vibrated as it passed.

The safety line tightened again, sang, twanged, relaxed.

Lee shot down the corridor. The wave caught him in midair, spun him, sent him flat against the wall, swearing, the wind knocked out of him for a moment as he caromed away toward the opposite wall. He managed to roll before he hit, hitting the wall feet-first, kicking off again.

The wave ripped down the main corridor. Debris swirled before it, flotsam that had been equipment or component parts of human beings.

The Event Horizon was beginning to resonate now, the superstructure sounding with a deepening roar that suggested that the ship was about to tear apart.

The hatchway to the medical bay slammed open, the door buckling and a hinge tearing. A wave of medical debris swirled up before the wave.

Wendy grabbed the edge of the computer station she had been working on, ducking as debris pelted her. The wave pulled her up from her haven, wrenched her away from the console, and slammed her into the bulkhead. Medical equipment peppered her, bounced from the wall, went spinning crazily away. Her trajectory away from the wall took her back into the console, winding him, but giving her something to hold onto.

The wave swept on into the bridge, shoving the dead man up against the bridge windows and causing Soos to bounce helplessly from the deck. He caught the back of one of the flight seats, holding on for dear life as momentum spun him around.

The wave swept on outward.

Tambry, Robbie, and Dipper were startled as Mabel's point-of-view monitor tried to clear for a moment, a vague image rolling amongst the static. Dipper blinked, trying to clear his vision—he would have sworn that the image was of a womans face, screaming.

It couldn't have been, he told himself.

Mabel's monitor cleared to static again. Tambry opened her mouth to say something.

Wendy and Soos' monitors suddenly filled with static as well. The radio link hissed and went silent.

"What—" Robbie started to say.

The Lewis and Clark began to rumble, a freight train sound that was incongruous out here in deep space.

The ship began to shudder and rattle. To Dipper it felt as though reality was trying to twist.

The wave struck, ripping through the bridge. Metal was screaming somewhere in the ship, the superstructure stressing as the gravity wave passed through.

Tambry turned and ducked as a console flashed and sparked next to her.

Behind Dipper there was a loud bang as something shorted out, and he smelled ozone and burning insulation. The bridge lights flickered and dimmed.

Deeper in the ship, he could hear the sound of systems failing and metal tearing. Absurdly, he wondered if Soos' vid unit would be okay. It would tear him up to lose the recording of his son.

There was another sound too, shockingly familiar because he had spent so much time unconsciously on alert for it: the sound of air escaping into vacuum.

"The fuck was that?" Robbie yelled.

His question did not receive an answer. A Klaxon was sounding now, emergency lights flashing. They were losing atmosphere. Tambry had turned to her boards, getting answers from those that still worked. The bridge was filled with smoke that drifted lazily towards the hatch.

"We lost the starboard baffle," Tambry said. She looked up, her face holding an urgency that bordered on panic. "The hull's been breached!"

The main pressure door to the bridge was closing, ready to seal them off.

Nate would have to take his chances in the airlock bay, or wherever he was.

With a low grinding sound, the pressure door stopped, half-closed. Smoke drifted around it.

Robbie was frantically checking a console, trying to get the door moving again. After a few moments he looked up, shaking his head. "The safety circuit's failed."

Dipper stared at the drifting smoke, the stuck door. "We're losing atmosphere…."

"There are pressure suits in the airlock," Tambry snapped. "Go!"

They sprinted for the hatchway.

The smoke followed, a lazy snake.

* * *

><p>Dark, dark, deep in the dark. She was Within, suspended, the dark passing through her, stripping her naked, peeling out the contents of her mind, pouring the pieces of her soul into a pool that floated in Nothing.<p>

**I touch all things**.

_Who are you?_

**I am.**

Another answer that made no sense.

The darkness had no end.

Innocence.

The concept seemed almost a curse. What was wrong with purity?

**You know too well where the line is drawn.**

Points of light pierced the darkness. There was a sound of pain, of anguish.

A circle of light, like fire breathed into the air. The darkness was not driven back.

**You are not the one I need.**

The points of light fell into the circle.

_What am I, then?_

**Dangerous.**

Lines of light fell from point to point.

_Because of this?_

**Yes. We cannot suffer the innocent to live. It profits us nothing.**

A five-pointed star within a circle. A shield, a hope.

Without knowing how she did it, she brought it close, trying to reintegrate herself in the warm soul-glow. _God be with me—Pfagh!_

The darkness struck her, crushing, overpowering. All that remained of her consciousness fell away from her.

Silent and cold, Mabel spun away through the darkness.

* * *

><p>Lee shot through the opening into the First Containment, slowing long enough to get his bearings as he approached the whirling tube. The sight sickened him, but it did not slow him down. Oriented, he kicked off again, sailing through the microgravity like an underpowered version of Superman, one arm flung out ahead.<p>

He shot down the tube and into the Second Containment, growling, "Hold on, Baby Bear…."

Coolant was once again forming wandering globules. He splashed through several of them, splattering coolant left and right, making angry noises at the obstructions.

Reaching out, he managed to kill his velocity by grabbing the main console, an effort that almost dislocated his shoulder. He caught sight of Mabel's safety line, taut across the room, and made his way to it, following it down into the main area of the Containment.

The line went all the way down to the Core.

It went into the Core.

"Oh my God," Lee whispered.

The Core was a pulsing black mass poised in the middle of the gloom. It seemed almost alive, angry. Mabel had somehow fallen into it, or been pulled in. The safety line had not slackened, which meant that it was still likely to be attached to her.

Lee put his hand on the line.

It went slack. Lee's heart skipped a beat and his skin felt so cold suddenly that he could have sworn his suit heater had quit.

The Core rippled and pulsed outwards, a cold black explosion. Lee started to back off, his heart racing. There was another pulse, bigger this time.

Something light hurtled from the depths of the darkness. A human figure.

Mabel.

Lee kicked off, hurtling upward, his arms wide. Mabel, limp as a dishrag, slammed into him, sending them both off on a new vector, the pulse from the Core providing additional impetus. Lee turned his head frantically, tumbling them slightly. They were heading straight for one of the long control rods that lined the containment chamber, a fatal encounter if they struck it head on.

Lee twisted, kicking out, trying to change their position. He finally managed to put them both into a slow backwards tumble, praying that it would be enough.

He clutched Mabel tightly, closed his eyes and begged God for mercy.

He felt the control rod slide by beneath his backside, slick and cold. He almost cried with relief.

They slammed into the wall, rebounded, came up against the side of another control rod. Lee was ready by then, holding on to Mabel with one arm and gripping a long zero-g screwdriver in the other. He drove the business end of the screwdriver into the side of the control rod and hung on for dear life. It was a hell of a way to stop. Between hitting the wall and this ad hoc braking maneuver, Lee figured he was going to be aching for the next two years.

Lee extracted the screwdriver bit and put the tool away on his belt, turning his attention to Mabel. He pulled the young woman close, looked her over.

"Mabel, you talk to me, give me something here," Lee said. Mabel's head lolled to one side. The engineer was still breathing. There was no way to tell for sure until Mabel's suit came off, but there were no overt signs of physical injury, no apparent bleeding. The suit was still secure, no visible holes or signs of air loss.

Lee closed his eyes tightly, wondering if he could pray enough to bring them both out of this mess in one piece.

"Baby Bear," he said, softly, "don't do this… don't do this…"

Clutching Mabel to him, he kicked off again, aiming for the exit.

Behind him, the Core pulsed with dark malevolence.


	9. Chapter 9

Medical instruments and debris whirled lazily in the air, some bouncing gently from the walls, ceiling, deck. The last vibrations had subsided now.  
>Whatever had struck the Event Horizon had moved on, Wendy realized. It did not seem likely to repeat itself any time soon. Cautiously, she rose out of her protective crouch, giving her suit a visual check as best she could.<p>

She turned around, surveying the damage. The hatch was buckled and torn, the door hanging by one bent hinge. Some medical instruments had been buried in the walls, ceiling, and floor. Cabinets and lockers had been blown open, contents spilling out to add to the general airborne chaos.

No indication of air leaks. Small mercies, she thought.

Auto-keying her radio, she said, "Can anybody hear me?"

There was an almost immediate response from Robbie. "Captain Corduroy."

Wendy sighed and frowned, but it was more with relief than annoyance.

"Robbie, where the hell have you been?"

"We have a situation here," he said.

Wendy suddenly felt ice cold.

As far as Dipper was concerned at the moment, the best way to make a man feel clumsy and incompetent was to make him get into an EVA suit in a hurry. Nate was patiently helping him with the details, which meant that Nate was taking a terrible risk himself.

Tambry was just completing her suit-up, getting her helmet in place and locked down. Robbie had managed to be in a suit faster than Dipper had ever imagined it could be done. His helmet was already on, and he was holding a conversation with Wendy.

Nate slapped Dipper's helmet onto his suit. Dipper reached up to seal it, hearing the hiss. The radio was already active.

Robbie was saying, "We lost the starboard baffle and the hull cracked. Our safety seals didn't close, the circuit's fried—"

"Do we have time for a weld?" Wendy asked. To Dipper, the Captain sounded as steady as a rock. He envied Wendy, that cool detachment.

Nate was suiting up quickly now. Tambry came over to Dipper, checking his suit and making sure his helmet was properly sealed.

"We're losing pressure at two hundred and eighty liters a second," Robbie said, "and our oxygen tanks ruptured. In three minutes our atmosphere will be gone. We are fucking dead."

"No one's dying on my watch, Robbie!" Wendy barked. Her was a voice you would choose not to argue with. "What about the reserve tanks?"

"They're gone," Robbie said.

There was a long silence. Dipper pictured Wendy racking her brain for a solution to the dilemma and failing to come up with anything acceptable. As far as Dipper could tell, listening to the damage reports and Robbie's pessimistic liturgy, there was only one option left to them.

"The Event Horizon," Dipper said.

Tambry, Robbie, and Nate turned to stare at him.

"What?" Robbie said.

Dipper stepped towards Robbie. "It still has air and reserve power. We can activate gravity and life support."

"No one's breathed that air in seven years," Nate said. "It could be contaminated."

"We can't stay in these suits," Tambry said. "The air won't last."

"I'm not getting on that goddamn ship!" Robbie said, sounding angrier and angrier. "We don't even know what happened on that ship."

Dipper turned to the pilot, his face set. "It beats dying."

Wendy closed her eyes again, tried not to sigh, opened her eyes. "Dipper's right. Get on board the Event Horizon. I'll meet you at the airlock."

She started toward the ruined hatch as Robbie said, "But—"

"You heard me, Robbie." She stopped in the corridor, got her back up against the wall. "Soos, are you with me?"

"I'm ahead of you," Soos said.

He moved across the main consoles, throwing switches, checking readouts.

For all the design work thrown into the Event Horizon, the ship had some very standardized instrumentation. She had the boards figured out and operating.

"Bringing the thermal units online," he announced, pressing a keypad.

Soos turned to another part of the console, making sure he had his feet planted firmly on the deck. "Hold tight and prep for gees," he said, then counted to ten under his breath.

He pressed another keypad.

Beneath the decks, artificial gravity units ramped up, humming. Soos felt the rising fields as a pulsing, tingling sensation through his body. Suddenly he had weight again, not just mass.

The frozen corpse, aloft once again, arced down to the deck. Soos jumped back as it shattered on impact, scattering frozen flesh and blood across the deck.

In the Second Containment, Lee heard the warning and aimed for the deck, coolant or no coolant, an effort to make certain Mabel was safe. He almost made it all the way before the artificial gravity pulled the two of them down.

They hit the deck in a rain of coolant. Lee held Mabel close, trying to shield her faceplate with an arm.

The gray downpour ended abruptly, leaving them lying in a slick gray pool.

Lee propped Mabel up, making sure she was still breathing, then scrabbled his way upright, using the console for leverage.

He looked down into the Second Containment, seeking the source of Mabel's condition.

The Core rippled with blackness and seemed to turn in on itself, taking on a new solidity. Rings appeared around the main casing, spinning slowly. The dark energy seemed to bleed away to nowhere.

Lee shook his head. None of this made any sense. None of it.

Something else caught his attention. Sections of Mabel's safety line, across the Second Containment. They had spread a considerable length of rope around the place after Mabel had emerged from the Core, but not all of it had come out.

He tracked the sections.

Both ended at the Core. Both were lying on the gantry, sheared through.

There should have been a couple hundred meters more of the line, Lee figured, between those shear points.

It was nowhere to be seen, but he knew exactly where it was, and the thought of what might have happened froze him, leeching his strength. He turned, his back against the console, and slid down until he was sitting in the coolant again.

_Oh, Baby Bear_, he thought, _where did you go?_


	10. Chapter 10

Wendy raced through the Event Horizon, her feet pounding against the deck.

Time was a critical factor now, and she had no time to waste in strolling down to the airlocks. This mission had gone to hell in a handbasket and it was going to take a miracle to pull them back from the edge.

She reached the airlocks just as Dipper arrived, the rest of the Lewis and Clark's crew coming behind him. Dipper was mildly surprised. Dipper's body language displayed an almost inhuman eagerness. Tambry followed Dipper into the ship, Nate arriving right behind her. Robbie trailed in reluctantly, hanging back as much as he could. Wendy glared at her pilot, but she no longer had any time to waste in cajoling the man along.

"Everybody okay?" Wendy said, looking them over.

"We're all here," Tambry said.

"Okay." Wendy took a deep breath, knowing full well that none of her crew would like her next selected move. "Let's find out how much time we just bought."

"I still have to test the air," Nate said, hurriedly.

Wendy shook her head. "No time. This is the only oxygen we've got for three billion klicks."

Nate stepped forward, lifting a hand. Wendy did not expect the move to go much further than that. "And if it's contaminated?"

"I'll let you know," Wendy said.

She unlocked her helmet catches and heard the hiss of the seal opening. She exhaled slowly, then lifted the helmet off, taking a deep breath.

Nate was watching her face, unblinking.

Wendy breathed out.

She smiled.

* * *

><p>The Event Horizon rippled with light and power, coming alive.<p>

On the bridge, Dipper moved easily between the different bridge stations, restoring power, bringing things back to life. Watching him, Wendy found it hard to accept that the scientist had spent seven years away from his pet project. Even harder to accept that Dipper had spent relatively little time aboard the vessel before its ill-fated maiden voyage. He seemed completely comfortable aboard the ship, oblivious to the signs of carnage around him.

Wendy turned back to Tambry, who had taken up residence at the communications workstation. She had spent the past ten minutes running one diagnostic routine after another, trying to ascertain the state of the communications equipment.

She looked up now. "The antenna array's completely fried. We've got no radio, no laser, no high-gain." She looked directly into Wendy's eyes, playing the brave soldier to the hilt. "No one's coming to help us." She coughed suddenly, covering her mouth. "This air tastes bad."

Wendy had to agree with her on that score. "But at least we can breathe it."

"Not for long," she said.

"Not enough oxygen?"

"Oxygen is not the problem," Tambry said.

"Carbon dioxide." Wendy's voice was flat.

Tambry nodded. "It's building up with every breath we take." She sat back, rubbing her face. "The CO2 filters on the Event Horizon are shot."

Wendy considered a couple of possibilities, then said, "We can take the filters from the Clark."

Tambry nodded again. "I thought of that," she said, tapping her fingers on the communications station. "With the filters from the Clark we've got enough breathable air for twenty hours. After that we'd better be on our way home."

Wendy nodded, accepting that judgment. "What about the life readings you picked up?"

Tambry grimaced, then shrugged. "The Event Horizon sensors show the same thing—'bio-readings of indeterminate origin.' Right before the Clark got hit there was some kind of surge, right off the scale, but now it's back to its previous levels."

Wendy knew she was trying to get blood from a stone with this line of questioning, but she had to find answers. If she was going to keep everyone alive, she needed all the information that could be gathered. She had not had all the information when the Goliath went out from under her, and it had cost lives.

"What's causing the readings?"

Tambry looked back at the silent comms board, frowning. "Whatever it is, it's not the crew."

"So where are they?" Wendy looked around, frustrated, feeling helpless. "We've been over every inch of this ship and all we've found is blood."

Dipper had paused in his peregrinations around the bridge. At the moment, he was standing silently, looking at a bloody smear high up on one bulkhead.

Wendy looked up at it too. There were many more around the ship. The only complete corpse they had discovered so far was now packed piecemeal into a cryogenics unit in the hope that they could get it back to Earth for analysis and disposal. Nate had barely complained about cleaning up the mess.

Dipper looked down from the bloody wall, then turned his head to look at Wendy.

"What happened here?" Wendy asked.

Dipper remained silent.


	11. Chapter 11

_This story has over a nine hundred views and only twenty one comments. Seriously? Come on guys, do you have any_ idea_ how long it took me to write this story? At least give it a little more love then it has. Please? And while you're at it, be sure to check out EZB's awesome_ story_ "_Return to Gravity Falls". _It_. _Is Awesome. Seriously. Do it. DO ETT NOW!_

* * *

><p>Even with lights cutting into the darkness of it, the Event Horizon was a frightening beast of a ship, a huge construction that was difficult to comprehend. Against it, the Lewis and Clark was a speck, a pilot fish accompanying a whale.<p>

Feeling like a brother to dust, Robbie clung to the hull of the Lewis and Clark, bulky in full EVA gear and cautious as he moved forward, one magnetic boot at a time. This was a hell of a way to earn a pension, but af least it got him off the Event Horizon. There was something sick and unholy about that ship; he had been certain of that since Dipper had started to explain what all this was about.

Just ahead of him, there was a long rip in the hull plating. The metal had buckled together, tearing like aluminum foil under the pressure of the wave that had struck the two ships. Vapor was still leaking slowly into space.

He knelt down carefully, taking a closer look, then keyed his suit radio.

"Captain, you copy?"

"I'm here, Robbie," Wendy said. "How's the Clark?"

_I'm fine, ma'am, doing okay out here_. He bit his tongue. Wendy was doing all she could. "I've found a two-meter fracture in the outer hull. We should be able to repair it and repressurize." He paused for a moment. "It's going to take some time."

"We don't have time, Robbie. In twenty hours we run out of air."

That certainly put things into perspective.

"Understood," he said.

Out here all alone, then, which was fine, because he would rather be here than aboard that monstrosity of a spaceship. Neptune passed below him, a dizzying experience if he wanted to look in that direction. He kept his attention entirely on the Lewis and Clark.

He reached to his utility belt, extracting the basic patch applicator, emptying it into the tear. The compound went in almost as a gel, but quickly foamed and spread. Within moments it had hardened. The patch would be durable, though not pretty, and secure once it was riveted into place.

He tossed the empty applicator away, not watching to see it begin to fall in a decaying orbit toward Neptune. He reached down to the utility belt again, pulling out a zero-gravity nailgun. He began riveting the edges of the patch into place.

All tied to each other in one way or another, planet, man, and ships hurtled on through the darkness.

* * *

><p>Mabel had retreated somewhere deep inside herself, Dipper thought. She had seen something, heard something, been somewhere that her conscious mind could not accept, and this condition was her best defense. Lee had not been able to fill in many of the details—he had been in a mild state of shock himself.<p>

He looked down at Mabel, and his heart ached. She was too young, too kind, for this to have happened to her. Perhaps she should never have been assigned to this particular vessel in the first place—at this age people ought to be confined to milk runs. Let the grizzled old combat veterans fly the desperate missions.

Mabel was stretched out on a diagnostic table, covered with a thermal blanket. Looking at her, it was hard to believe that there was anything seriously wrong.

He looked up from Mabel. Nate stood at the other side of the bed, watching him. Dipper found his studiously neutral expression to be irritating.

"How is she?" he said, trying to push his mind away from the annoyance. Nate was doing everything he could. The mask he wore was nothing more than his way of coping with the situation.

"Her vitals are stable," Nate said, slowly, "but she's unresponsive to stimuli. She might wake up in fifteen minutes. She might not wake up at all."

Dipper looked down at Mabel again. She seemed to be sleeping.

He turned away abruptly, squeezing his eyes shut, willing the pain back.

There were things to be done. He headed for the bridge.

* * *

><p>Wendy had gone so far as to issue an "at ease" command, but even that edict could not overcome the tension and exhaustion in her crew. There was too much evidence of mayhem, too much debris, too much blood. Too much of everything except time, air, and answers.<p>

Tambry seemed the exception amongst them. She had taken up a position at the briefing table, lounging there as though she hadn't a care in the world. Wendy had expected the navigator to be falling apart by this point.

Dipper could barely sit still. More irritating was Lee—he was bouncing that ball of his. Wendy kept quiet about it; better she do that than come up with something wilder. Nate, meanwhile, sat quiet, sometimes glancing over at Soos, who was staring out of the bridge windows, hiding his emotions as best he could.

Wendy turned to look at a video monitor. Robbie was still working on the hull of the Lewis and Clark. Wendy suspected that Robbie could have been finished long ago—he just did not want to be back on board the Event Horizon.

Wendy turned away from the monitor and faced her crew. She took a deep breath, wondering if she could get them out of this mess. She trusted them to pull together, and she figured Dipper would pitch in, but the circumstances were wretched and their resources far too tight.

"Okay, guys," she said, pitching her voice low enough to avoid being threatening while still maintaining authority, "there's been a change in the mission. In less than eighteen hours we will run out of breathable air. Our primary objective now is survival. That means we focus on repairing the Lewis and Clark and salvaging whatever will buy us more time."

She looked around at her crew. Dipper was staring at her, an unnerving focus.

Soos had turned around from the bridge windows to listen to her. This was not new information, but she was gratified that they could still follow the protocols.

"Our secondary objective," she went on, "is finding out what happened to this ship and its crew. Two months from now I fully intend to be standing in front of the good Admiral giving my report. Nate, take samples from these stains, compare them to medical records. I want to know whose blood this is. Soos, I want you to go through the ship's log, see if we can't find some answers."

Soos straightened up, nodding. "I can use the station in Medical, keep an eye on Mabel."

"Fine," Wendy said. She looked at Tambry. "Tambry. I want you to repeat the bio-scan."

Tambry closed her eyes, sighing. "I'll just get the same thing—"

"Not acceptable," Wendy snapped. She was not about to allow Tambry to quit trying now. As soon as any of them quit trying, that person was as good as dead. "I want to know what's causing those readings. If the crew is dead, I want the bodies. I want them found."

Tambry sat for a few moments, thinking it through. Then she looked up at Wendy, her expression determined. "I can reconfigure the scan for C-12, amylase proteins."

"Do it." Tambry turned away, getting to work. Wendy turned to the briefing table. "Dr. Pines."

Dipper did not flinch away. "Yes."

"One of my crewmen is down. I want to know what happened to her."

Lee grabbed his ball out of the air with a loud smacking sound. "I told you," the rescue tech said angrily. "She was inside the Core."

Dipper was shaking his head. The scientist looked confused, just as he had looked confused when Lee had tried to explain what had happened earlier. At that point all they had on hand was chaos; Wendy had hoped to get something more out of Dipper during the briefing. Lee was silent for a few moments. Dipper said nothing, intent on Lee. Wendy nodded at Lee, giving her assent for Lee to continue.

Lee swallowed and tried to compose himself. "It was like… nothing was there." Lee looked up at Wendy, but found no cure for his helplessness there. "And then Mabel just... appeared and then it… it was like…" Lee was becoming unfocused, trying to find his way back into memory, putting words to the clutter of images. "… liquid. And then the rings started moving again and it froze solid."

"That's not possible," Dipper said, his voice almost a whisper. Lee stared at the man who seemed lost in his thoughts. His eyes seemed to grow misty, but he composed himself and continued. He leaned forward, onto the table. "Mr. Lee, those rings only stop moving just before the gravity drive activates, If they weren't moving, that would mean the gateway was open—"

"Then that's what I saw," Lee said, interrupting Dipper. "The gateway was open."

"—but the gateway can't have been open," Dipper said, "because the gravity drive wasn't activated. It can't just turn on by itself," Dipper said.

"Well, then who the fuck turned it on?!"

"Lee!" Wendy snapped. Lee sat down heavily, boneless. Wendy gave Dipper a soft look. "Dr. Pines, I know this is hard for you right now, but we need you to help us. Your sister may die. Whatever happened to her could happen to all of us."

Dipper hesitated for far too long, a pause that told Wendy that the scientist was trying to think of a way to explain what happened. Finally Dipper sighed and said, "I don't know. I don't wanna sound like a skeptic, but . . . . . Maybe Lee saw an optical effect caused by…" Dipper frowned, hesitating again. "Gravitational distortion."

Lee glared at Dipper. His hands were clenched into fists. "I know what I saw and it wasn't a fucking 'optical effect'!"

"LEE!" Wendy barked. Lee subsided, glaring at Dipper. This was all she needed—Lee acting like Robbie. She was faintly glad that Robbie was elsewhere, working on the Lewis and Clark. Wendy turned her attention to Dipper, who was warily resuming his seat. " 'Gravitational distortion?' "

Dipper hesitated for a moment, watching Lee. Reluctantly, he looked at Wendy.

"If a burst of gravity waves escaped from the Core, they could distort space-time. They could have made Mabel . . . . seem to disappear. They could also have damaged the Lewis and Clark."

As far as Wendy was concerned, there was something missing, something Dipper was avoiding saying. "What could cause them?" Dipper was silent, staring helplessly at Wendy. "Dipper. What's in the Core?"

"It's complicated…" Dipper trailed off, looking abashed at the weakness of this answer.

"How much time do you need?" Wendy said, taking several steps closer to Dipper, leaning down on the briefing table, using her clenched fists for support. "We have . . . . . " She checked her watch. "Seventeen hours and forty-two minutes. Now… what is in the Core?"

Dipper was silent for too long again. Wendy began to consider less civil methods of getting information out of Dipper. Suddenly, the scientist seemed to make a decision.

Dipper sat forward, eyes cast downwards, looking at the table as he grasped his head in his hands.

"A black hole," Dipper said.

* * *

><p>Wendy and Dipper stood at the end of the walkway into the Second Containment, watching the Core uneasily. The rings were moving slowly, quietly, but the Core itself had an eerie rippling effect, a sense of a great dark power somehow confined to a small space.<p>

All around them, power hummed and sang of enormous energies. Wendy felt dwarfed in this space.

Tambry, by contrast, was at ease, walking around the Core, inspecting it, looking it over like a loving mother. Wendy almost expected her to reach out and pet the thing, and she felt a strange sense of uneasiness around her shipmate.

Dipper turned and looked at Wendy. "When a star dies, it collapses in on itself, becomes so dense that nothing can escape its gravity, not even light. It becomes a black hole."

Tambry was standing near the Core, unwavering. "The most destructive force in the universe," she whispered. "And you created one. Incredible."

"Yes," Dipper said. He seemed tense and uneasy. "We use that power to fold space-time."

Not as much power as Dipper would like everyone to think, Wendy reflected. She was ready to bet that Dipper's Core actually dealt with quantum black holes as postulated in the work of Stephen Hawking and others in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Given Dipper's ability to produce one on cue and trap it within the Core, there was enough power there to fold space-time nicely. Either way, Dipper had a tiger by the tail.

"It would take the Lewis and Clark a thousand years to reach our closest star. The Event Horizon could be there in a day."

"If it worked," Wendy said.

Tambry smiled. "You can come down. It's perfectly safe. At least, I think. I'm mean, nothing's happening to me."

Wendy and Dipper exchanged looks, then walked down to the Core. Everything in here, with the exception of the Core itself, seemed to be coated with coolant. It gave Wendy the uncomfortable feeling of walking willingly into the belly of the whale. Hello, my name is Jonah, I am an appetizer.

Somewhere the idea had lost its humorous edge.

Wendy and Dipper stopped before the Core, staring up at it, getting a closer look at the machinery as it moved around. Even at this close a range, the Core played optical tricks. Wendy felt vaguely sick.

"You let us board this ship," Wendy said to Dipper, "and you didn't tell us?"

Dipper turned to face Wendy, his face turning red. "I'm sorry, but the instructions I had told me to brief you on a need-to-know basis. Given our current situation, you need to know."

Wendy stared at Dipper, barely able to comprehend the man's attitude. "I want this room sealed. The Second Containment is off limits."

Tambry suddenly spoke up. "But there isn't any danger, is there? I mean Dipper said that the ring surrounding it kept all the stuff under control."

"Under control?" Wendy growled. She waved an arm, pointing to somewhere out beyond the confines of the Event Horizon. "My ship is in pieces. Dipper's sister is dying." Wendy took a deep breath, trying to rein her temper in without success "No one goes near that thing."

Wendy turned around and started back up the walkway. Dipper stared at Tambry for a moment more, then he followed his captain.

Tambry watched them leave.

Overhead, the power sang


	12. Chapter 12

Soos squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his face, trying to blot out, for a moment at least, the tedious log visuals from the bridge flight recorder. The former captain of the Event Horizon and his crew had been meticulous about making log entries, but had not had much of any consequence to record.

He sat back, knowing he was starting to fade, and growing angry at doing so, even though Soos knew that was unreasonable. It would not have bothered him so much if he had something to show Wendy. There was nothing yet.

Another structural status report. He sighed.

The lights flickered. Startled, he looked up, but the lights had steadied again. He looked back down at his screen.

Behind him, something made a rustling sound, like something moving over paper. He turned around, slowly. "Mabel?"

Mabel was still lying on the examination table, a sheet covering her. She had not moved or woken.

Something had made the sound.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck and his felt his arms breaking out in goosebumps. Cautiously, he reached out and grasped a scalpel from the instrument tray that Nate had set out for any further emergencies.

The sound started again, became clearer, became the sound of someone scrabbling at plastic, trying to break through with nothing more than fingernails and determination.

He stood up, walked past Mabel, following the sound. The examination tables were covered in plastic sheeting, never having been readied for use.

The plastic around the last table was moving, something writhing beneath it. Not certain why he was doing so, he reached out and grasped the edge of the plastic cover, pulling it back, needing to know what was under there, what was calling him.…

Denny.

He gasped, suddenly weak, nerveless. The scalpel slipped from his fingers, struck the deck, bounced with a tinny noise.

Denny. He looked up at him from the table, his waist and legs still beneath the plastic, looked up at her and giggled in that way that he had, amused at a world that insisted on being silly to his perspective.

He reached up to him, and Soos remembered the video he had been watching on the Lewis and Clark. He should pick him up, he thought, that's what Dad does, playing horsey.

"Daddy …" Denny said, and he giggled again, as though this was just the best game in the world. His eyes shone, and he spilled over with love for him..

He started to pull the plastic further back, knowing he had to get him out from under there and that they could figure out the explanations later.

Then he saw what he had missed before. Where Denny's atrophied legs should have been, beneath the plastic, something was squirming frantically, like a bag of angry snakes, the plastic pulsing up and down.

Horrified, he dropped the plastic sheet, backing away. This could not have been Denny. His son was on Earth, with his mother.

"Soos?"

He turned too fast, almost losing his balance. Nate was standing in the hatchway, holding a collection of blood sample containers in rubber-gloved hands. His usual mask had slipped a little, revealing concern.

He turned back toward Denny.

The table was empty. His son, or whatever was masquerading as his son, was gone. He looked back at Nate again.

"What's wrong?" he asked, putting the blood samples aside.

"I…" Soos started. He hesitated, trying to clear his mind. The images were trying to fade, becoming elusive. He squeezed his eyes shut, shuddering. "I'm just tired, that's all. It's nothing, dude."

He made his way back to the workstation, trying to focus on his work.

It's nothing.

* * *

><p>Right now EVA was not precisely the thing Lee wanted to do, despite his earlier eagerness. If anything, he would have preferred being in a Gravity Couch, totally out of it and well on the way back to Earth aboard the Lewis and Clark. This mission was totally, crazily, out of hand.<p>

The one positive thing here was the size of the Event Horizon. That meant more airlock bays, which got around having the umbilicus in the way.

The inner airlock door hissed open and Robbie stepped into the bay, undogging his helmet and pulling it off. His hair was matted down, slick with sweat.

"You been out there a long time," Lee said, looking him over. "Trying to break my record?"

Robbie sat down heavily on a bench, getting his gloves off. "I'd rather spend the next twelve hours outside than another five minutes in this can."

Lee made a moue of disgust. "You don't need to tell me that. I pulled a lot of ops in my time, seen decompression, radiation… but what I saw today…"

Lee trailed off, unable to say any more. He could not push the images out of his mind, no matter how he tried.

"How's Mabel?" Robbie asked, interrupting the silence.

Lee shook his head, "Same."

Robbie opened his suit, then reached down to get his boots off. An EVA suit keeps you alive but makes you smell very, very bad in the process.

Suddenly, Robbie said, "When I was a kid, my ma used to tell me I was gonna go to a bad place if I didn't change the way I treated people. And she was right." Robbie's eyes were filled with a fervor that Cooper found more than a little spooky. "This ship, it's crazy, you know. I mean, trying to go faster than light, that's like the Tower of Babel. You know what God did to the Tower of Babel, don't you? He cast it down."

Lee sighed, shaking his head. "Robbie, we got enough shit going on without you going biblical on me."

Lee picked up his helmet, put it on, and sealed it, hearing the hiss.

Without waiting for Robbie to check him over, he walked over to the airlock, hit the door control, and ducked through.

All of a sudden, being outside had become very, very attractive.

* * *

><p>Wendy, Nate, and Dipper had gathered behind Soos as he recalled the last entry in the Event Horizon log. He had found nothing useful so far.<p>

"This is the final entry in the ship's log," he said, and pressed the play control.

The video display cleared. The captain of the Event Horizon appeared on the screen, sitting in the center seat. He looked excited, as well he should; this was the main event in the Event Horizon's maiden voyage. His crew, all eighteen of them, were gathered behind him. A few solemn faces, many smiles.

He said, "My name is Fiddleford H. McGucket. And I just want to say how proud I am of my crew. I'd like to name my station heads: Tobias Determined , Stanley Pines, Blendin Blandin, Shandra Jimenez, and Bud Gleeful. We have reached safe distance and are preparing to engage the gravity drive and open the gateway to Proxima Centauri."

"I wonder if they made it?" Wendy said, quietly.

On the screen, McGucket raised a hand in salute and said, "Ave atque vale. Hail and farewell."

_Little did they know_, Wendy thought.

There was a burst of static across the screen. At first Wendy thought the log disc had simply run its course, but then realized that it would then have simply stopped playing, shutting off the system. There was something else on the disc.

A terrible sound came pouring from the speakers, shrieking and inhuman, something out the depths of their nightmares. Soos yelped and reached for the gain slider, cutting the racket down.

To Wendy, there was more than static on the screen. There was something moving inside the image. She reached out, tapping the pause control. She squinted at the screen, trying to resolve the image in the frozen frame. There was definitely something there, but she could not make it out at all now.

Soos was squinting at the frame too.

"What is that?" Wendy asked him.

Soos shook his head. "I can run the image through a series of filters, try to clean it up."

There was a chance that they might learn something useful from the scrambled section of the disc. Wendy nodded. "Go for it."

Without warning, the lights faded out slowly. Emergency lighting came on, illuminating them with a dim, reddish wash.

"A power drain," Nate said. Wendy had to agree—something had been activated. She had a terrible suspicion about the reason for the drain.

"The Core!" Dipper snapped, turning to Wendy.

"Go!" Wendy said.

Dipper ran for the door.

"The rest of you stay here," Wendy said, before Nate could head for the door. "I don't want anyone else going near that thing."

Wendy took off after Dipper.

She caught up with the scientist halfway down the main corridor, surprised at how fast Dipper was able to move. They ran together through the First Containment and down the tunnel into the Second Containment, not waiting for the main door to open fully, squeezing by as soon as they could.

"What's causing the drain?" Wendy asked, as Dipper went over to the main console.

"The magnetic fields are holding," Dipper said, examining the readouts. He shook his head, looking baffled. "Maybe a short in the fail-safe circuit. I'll check it out."

Dipper turned away from the console and opened a wall panel. To Wendy's surprise, there were tools and flashlights inside. Dipper handed tools to Wendy, and waved her over to an access panel on the wall. They set to work silently, removing bolts and magnetic clamps.

Behind the access panel was a cramped-looking duct. Wendy could see circuitry and modules inside as she bent down to look. The duct seemed to go for quite a distance.

She looked at Dipper, dubious. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"Me too," Dipper said.

Wendy handed him a flashlight and a small, wrapped toolkit.

Dipper tossed the flashlight and tools into the duct, then hauled himself inside. He almost filled the duct, but he paused a moment as he remained still. He grunted slightly as he called out, "Uhhh . . . . I'm stuck."

Wendy stiffled a giggle as she said, "Hang on, I'll help you out." She grabbed the Dipper's ankles and said "Okay, I'm gonna pull on, one . . . two . . . THREE!"

Dipper groaned as he felt himself get pulled from the duct, and he fell to the floor with a small 'thud'.

He lay on the ground for a second before saying, "Well, that sucked."

Wendy let out a small chuckle as she looked down at the doctor lying on the floor. "Okay, well since you're too fat to fit, what do we do? I know if you couldn't fit, then I can't. I mean, we're both about the same size. Except you're a couple of inches taller."

Dipper ponder an idea before saying, "Well, Soos and Nate are too big to fit in the duct, Lee and Robbie are working outside and . . . " he paused his sister came to mind.

Wendy spoke up and said, "What about Tambry?"

* * *

><p>"You want me to do <em>what<em>, _**where**_?" Tambry said.

"Look, all you really have to do is go in, fix a few wires and come back out." Dipper said. He handed Tambry a small, touch screen tablet and said, "Here. I've written down all that you need to do. You'll be in and out no time. I promise."  
>Tambry seemed hesitant, but she finally said, "In and out. That's it."<p>

"That's it." Dipper sighed before hauled herself inside the duct. She almost filled the duct, but she seemed to have no trouble moving.

Tambry's boots vanished from sight.

* * *

><p>The air in the operations duct was even more stale than the air circulating in the main part of the Event Horizon. Tambry managed to tolerate it with difficulty—there was a job to do, and the sooner she did it, the sooner shr would be out of there. She wished she had had a chance to sample real Earth air once more before coming out here, but she had not been off Daylight Station for years.<p>

She had found herself unable to conceive of taking a journey back down the length of Skyhook One.

Her breathing echoed in the cramped duct.

She crept forward, counting off circuit panels for Wendy and Dipper's benefit.

"E-Three… E-Five… E-Seven… where are you…?"

* * *

><p>Dipper had left Wendy to check the engineering board, trying to hammer the bio-scan into behaving itself. So far nothing had seemed to help.<p>

A yellow light began flashing in the upper left corner of the console.

Dipper stared, a feeling of dread stealing over him. New lights joined the first—more yellows, greens.

"What is—" he started.

The bio-scan flickered to life, the meters immediately pegging at the end of the scale on all readouts.

He hit the intercom switch. "Wendy, the bio-scan just went off the scale."

She shook her head.

Something bad was going on here.

* * *

><p>Nate made it across the medical bay in record time, only to realize that there was little he could do at the moment. Mabel was in the throes of an epileptic seizure, thrashing about on the examination table.<p>

Nate leaned over her, ready to intervene if Mabel's seizure showed signs of being dangerous or of throwing her to the deck. This might be a breakthrough point too, a sign that Mabel was coming out of the coma.

"Mabel!" Nate said, on the off chance that his patient was regaining consciousness. "Can you hear me? Mabel!"

There was something going on. Mabel's mouth was working as she tried to speak, and her eyes were open, albeit unfocused. Nate leaned in towards her, trying to hear.

Mabel suddenly arched, all of her muscles becoming rigid, as though she were being electrocuted. Nate looked up, alarmed.

"He's coming," Mabel hissed. Her voice sounded broken, a remnant of the torturer's art.

Nate felt cold. "Who? Who's coming?"

"The dark!" Mabel hissed. Something bubbled in her voice.

It might have been laughter.

* * *

><p>"There you are," Tambry said.<p>

Module E-12 was making a curious spitting and fizzing sound, very faint, but enough to indicate a potentially serious problem.

Tambry looked down at the small tablet, produced a screwdriver from the toolkit, opening up the module in a few moments. The cause of the problem was immediately evident—one of the circuit boards was quietly frying itself, a handful of sparks flying off. Tambry reached into the module and yanked the board out.

She pulled more tools out of the kit, and set to work. These modules were triple-redundant throughout the Event Horizon, but the removal of a board meant installing a bypass so that the system would not go looking for the missing chunk of circuitry. Getting the bypass in place was a minute or two of cramped, uncomfortable work.

As she started to back up, readying herself to get out of the duct, her flashlight began to flicker. She grunted, annoyed at the timing, and banged it against the duct wall, making the metal boom. She had one of the Event Horizon's flashlights, which might explain why this one was dying now.

The flashlights had been equipped with lithium-ion batteries, but even those had limits when it came to their life.

The light dimmed again. She shook it, but it did not help. The flashlight gave a last fitful glow and went out, plunging her into darkness.

"Um, Captain?" Tambry said, slowly. "I seem to have a problem with my light."

There was no answer from her radio, or along the duct.

Somewhere in the pitch darkness, far away and far too close, there was the sound of a single drip of water. Tambry felt cold, alone, ready to panic.

"Captain?" she whispered.

She felt as though she was falling. She knew that could not be so. The artificial gravity had been turned on.

Water dripped again, echoing in the darkness. Tambry closed her eyes, her breathing difficult.

A man's voice, as though at the bottom of a cavern. Tambry looked up, opening her eyes, seeing only darkness. She knew that voice, knew it all too well even now.

"Tambry," Thompson said, his voice soft by her ear. "Come to me."

He could not be here. Her breath came in a ragged gasp. Thompson could not be here.

The walls pressed in upon her.

"Thompson?" she whispered. Her voice echoed away into the darkness. She banged the flashlight against the side of the duct, over and over, trying to make it work, giving in to desperation.

"Be with me," Thompson whispered, and she almost screamed.

The flashlight flickered to life.

Wet hair hanging like seaweed in his ashen face, Thompson stared at her, inches away.

"Forever," he said softly.

* * *

><p>Wendy bent down to look into the duct, wondering what was going on with Tambry. The darkness inside the duct seemed to be total, which meant Tambry had gone pretty far into the thing. The radio link had been silent for minutes, but she could not be sure if that was because Tambry had not said anything since crawling into the duct, or if there was something in the duct that was blocking radio signals, she was about to straighten up when all of the lights went out. Even the main console had gone black.<p>

She took a deep breath, focusing on calm, keeping the storm of panic away from herself. She bent down again, finding the edge of the duct with her fingers.

"We just lost all power in here," she called into the duct. She heard her voice echo somewhere deep inside, but there was no answer. "Yo, Tambry?"

Nothing.

She straightened up, trying to see something in the darkness. To her surprise, she was successful.

The surprise gave way to fear. She knew she was looking toward the Core, but the red glow that he was seeing was not something she would have expected from the Core in its normal state.

She took several steps back.

The glow at the Core resolved into a humanoid figure consumed by fire. The sounds of inferno filled the air, and Wendy felt a wave of heat pass over her.

The figure lifted a blazing arm, fire dripping from it like water, pointing at Wendy.

The holocaust whispered, "Don't leave me…."

Wendy squeezed her eyes shut, her chest hollow.

When she opened her eyes again, the burning man was gone.

* * *

><p>Lee was still outside, but everyone else had gathered back on the bridge. Wendy figured she probably looked about as burned out as the rest of the crew by now. Even Tambry, sitting back at the briefing table, looked thrashed, her easy manner gone away completely. She had emerged from the duct looking like death warmed over.<p>

Nate was mooching about on the bridge, a scalpel in his hand that he was unconsciously flicking against the leg of his flight suit. Wendy could not figure out how Nate had so far failed to draw blood.

"Carbon dioxide poisoning produces hallucinations, impaired judgment—" Nate was saying.

They had been around this particular track once already, trying to put Wendy's vision into some sort of psychological pigeonhole. "Goddammit, Nate, it was not a fucking hallucination!" Wendy turned to Tambry, who was staring blankly at the two of them. "Tambry, you were in the duct, you heard it."

"No," Tambry said. Her voice sounded rusty.

"You must have seen something."

"No," She said. Her expression never changed. Wendy knew she was lying, but she was not sure that Tambry was lying about what Wendy had experienced. "I didn't see anything."

"I did," Soos said.

They all turned to look at him. He looked from one to the next, looking uncertain.

"About an hour ago," he said. He looked at Nate, apologetic. "In Medical. I saw my son. He was lying on one of the examination tables and his legs were…"

He trailed off, working to contain his emotions.

"Isn't it possible," Tambry said coldly, "that you were traumatized by finding the body on the bridge?"

Soos' head snapped up and he gave her an angry glare. "I've seen bodies before. This is different."

"Soos is right," Wendy said, folding her arms and looking down at Tambry.

She wondered what the navigator had seen in the duct, if she had seen anything at all. "It's not like something in your head, it's real. Robbie, what about you?"

Robbie was leaning against the hatchway, his arms folded and a troubled expression on his face. To Wendy, he looked about ready to bolt from the Event Horizon at a moment's notice.

"I didn't see anything," Robbie said, truculent, "and I don't have to see anything. But I'll tell you something—this ship is fucked."

Tambry scoffed at Robbie, a dismissive expression in place. "Thank you for that scientific analysis, Mr. Robert."

Wendy could have kicked Tambry for her blatant attempt to provoke Robbie. All they needed now was a physical battle, not that Tambry stood a chance of bringing Robbie down.  
>"You don't need to be a fucking scientist to figure it out!" Robbie yelled, taking a step toward Tambry, who regarded the pilot with a stony expression.<p>

"Robbie!" Wendy growled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nate moving closer to Robbie.

Robbie ignored his captain. "You think that someone can just break all the laws of physics," he snarled at Tambry, "without a price? He", he pointed a finger at Dipper, who was sitting in a pilots chair, apparently lost in his thoughts. "Already killed the last crew—"

Nate reached out and put a hand on Robbie's shoulder.

_Ah shit_, Wendy thought. Of all the moves Nate could have made.

Robbie swung around in a flash, slamming Nate back. Nate twisted away, grasping Robbie's flight suit with one hand, using the pilot's momentum against him.

Continuing his movement, Nate slammed Robbie up against the bulkhead, not attempting to soften the impact.

His hand blurring, Nate raised the scalpel, pressing the tip of it just below Robbie's ear. Robbie froze in place.

"NATE!" Wendy yelled, crossing the bridge. She would never have expected this sort of thing from Nate, certainly nothing as fast as this.

Nate took a deep breath, shuddering. He let the scalpel fall to the deck as he stepped back, releasing Robbie. Nate looked helplessly at Wendy, at Robbie.

"I'm sorry, I… I don't know why I did that."

"Carbon dioxide," Tambry mumbled, her tone sarcastic.

Robbie lunged at her, fists swinging. The navigator flinched back. "She's fucking lying! You know something—"

Wendy got in front of Robbie, grabbed him by the upper arms, squeezed.

"That's it, that's enough for one day, Robbie!" She glared into the pilot's eyes, giving him a look that threatened to shred the younger man on the spot.

"I need you back on the Clark, I need you calm, I need you using your head. You make a mistake out there, nobody's getting home, you understand?"

Robbie had started to try shaking Wendy off, but the litany and the expression stopped that. Robbie seemed to want to look everywhere but at his captain, but, in the finish, he met Wendy's eyes. Wendy was glad to see him cooling off, even relaxing a little.

Finally Robbie said, in a calmer voice, "Ma'am."

"We're a long way from home and we're in a bad place," Wendy said, letting the pilot go. "Let's not make it worse."

Wendy shook her head. She needed a few minutes to walk off the anger and the growing stress. Without saying anything more, she left the bridge, finding her way into one of the corridors that lined this end of the ship.

She was aware of Dipper following her. Unfinished business, probably, most likely something she ought to take care of. She wanted nothing more than a couple of minutes alone, but she was not going to get that.

"Wendy," Dipper said.

Wendy did not break her pace, merely kept going, determinedly hewing to her course to nowhere. "What is it, Doctor?"

"Listen, I've been studying the bio-scan," he said, hurrying to match pace with her, "and I've got a theory."

Wendy raised an eyebrow. "Proceed."

"I think there's a connection between the readings and the hallucinations, like they were all part of a defensive reaction, sort of an immune system—"

Wendy increased her pace, still avoiding looking at him. "I don't need to hear this."

Dipper pushed his pace, trying to keep up with Wendy. The effort left him almost running to match Wendy's long strides.

"You've got to listen!" he said.

Wendy's course had taken them through the ship into an airlock bay. Wendy stopped abruptly, causing him to stumble. She turned to face him. "To what? What are you saying? This ship is alive!"

Dipper shook his head. "I didn't say that. I said the ship is reacting to us. And the reactions are getting stronger. It's getting worse."

Wendy was breathing hard, trying to examine the concept rationally, unable to fathom it. "Dipper, do you know how crazy that sounds? It's impossible."

Hos stare was unwavering. "That doesn't mean it's not true."

Wendy looked at him for a long time, silent. Finally, she said, "Don't tell anyone what you just told me."


	13. Chapter 13

Time passing. The lights flickered throughout the ship.

Robbie had left the Event Horizon.

A dark sensation swept through the ship. If Wendy had been willing to accept the notion, she might have thought the ship was breathing, displaying signs of life.

They were all becoming afraid of the Event Horizon, Tambry thought, sitting at the gravity drive workstation. Wendy was barely talking, and Soos was constantly glancing around himself, always checking the corners as he moved.

Soos had returned to Medical, but she had been frightened, either for Mabel or of what he might see.

Nate and Soos were still on the bridge. Nate was scraping blood samples from the bulkheads, being as thorough as possible in the time they had left. Dipper was trying to make himself useful, but between the lack of communication and the difficulties with the bio-scan, he was frustrated and angry. He had chased off after Wendy, obviously with something on his mind. He had returned to the bridge looking even more frustrated than before.

For her part, Tambry had settled down at a gravity drive workstation was studying an embedding diagram. It rotated slowly on the display in front of her, while she gazed at it, unraveling the intricacies of it in her mind. The funnel-shaped wireframe image could tell her a great deal, under normal circumstances. For the moment, it was not telling her anything she did not already know. It was hard to concentrate right now. She could not get the image of Thompson out of her mind. Old wounds had opened up again, old nightmares.

Dipper walked up behind her and leaned down over her shoulder, looking at the display. "A phase-space model of the gateway," he said. "What are you looking at that for?"

She looked at the embedding diagram for a moment, watching it spin. "Tell me something. If the ship's engine is a black hole, when you power it up, it sort of… to put it in the simplest terms, it sucks the ship in and then spits the ship out somewhere else."

"Well," Dipper said, trying to adjust to her simplistic perspective, "basically, yes."

"Except the Event Horizon got spit out seven years too late."

Dipper nodded. "It's possible." He waved at the wireframe model. "If I reconstruct what happened when the gravity drive was activated—"

"It could tell us where the ship's been for those seven years."

"Exactly," Dipper said.

She was studying the wireframe intently, following the curves and lines with her eyes. The sides of the funnel never quite touched, never quite went anywhere, which was just as it should be.

"That's the black hole," Dipper said.

"Yes," Dipper said, softly. "The singularity." He half-smiled, suddenly enjoying himself, focusing on one of his favorite subjects.

"It is impressive," Tambry said. "The curvature of space becomes infinite and physics… physics just stops. A region of pure and unmitigated chaos."

Dipper was looking at her, almost curious, almost amused. "Why, Tambry, I think you're in love."

"Hmm," she said, absently, lost in her rapture. "Thompson used to tell me I loved my work more than I loved him. I told him that wasn't true, I just knew my work better, that's all."

"Thompson is your husband?" Dipper sounded as though her was warming to her, she noted. Nothing like the suggestion of domesticity to break the ice.

Flatly, she said, "He was. He died."

Dipper almost recoiled, shocked. "I'm so sorry."

Tambry did not bother to respond. She kept her eyes on the shifting wireframe.

Behind them, Nate said, "Do you think you can give me a hand with this?"

Without replying, Dipper moved away from Tambry's station, joining Nate.

Whatever ice had been broken had just as quickly been refrozen, which was just as well by Tambry.

She continued to watch the wireframe.

Suddenly, galvanized, she sat forward. The wireframe was distorting, changing in a way that she'd seen before. The funnel was opening out beyond the singularity and staying stable, forming some kind of wormhole.

"Impossible," she whispered, shaking her head. "But that would mean the gateway never closed… it's still open…."

She sat back, chilled.

If the gate was open, what was coming through it?

* * *

><p>Somewhere in his dreamworld, shadows were beating sticks on oil tanks, causing a great booming to resound through the desert landscape of his sleep.<p>

The sound was growing closer and closer, deafening him.

Soos woke with a start, wiping at his mouth where he had drooled a little. He had fallen asleep in one of the medical section's chairs and now had back and neck aches to go with the exhaustion.

Everything was fuzzy, unfocused. His ears were ringing. He looked around, trying to remember….

"Mabel?" he said, pushing himself out of the chair.

There, in the shadows. Mabel had somehow fallen from the examination table, taking the sheet with her. Suddenly hopeful, he crossed over to the untidy jumble of person and linen, and pulled back the edge of the sheet.

Mabel was not beneath the sheet. The sheet had been draped over a pair of nitrogen tanks.

He looked around, wildly. "Mabel!"

No answer.

Off to one side, a bio-scan display was just starting up.

There was a familiar metallic pounding in the distance, somewhere in the darkness of the Event Horizon. It echoed through the ship, growing louder. He had heard that sound in his dreams, the crashing sound of the shadows as they came.

Terror swelled up in him. Whatever it was, it was coming toward Medical, coming towards him. He sprinted for the hatch, wheeled right, and ran like the wind, his mind empty of everything except the need to get away.

The booming, thundering sound crashed on after him. He thought he felt the shadows closing around him, reaching for him. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in short gasps.

He sprinted onto the bridge, turned around, slammed the pressure door, bolting it. The sound was momentarily cut off.

He turned around. Nate and Dipper were at one side of the bridge, working on the bloodstains. Tambry was at the other side of the bridge, but he couldn't tell on first glance what she was doing. They had all turned toward him, staring.

Nate started toward him. "What's wrong?"

Soos was gasping, winded from his run. "You didn't hear it? You must have heard it!"

"Heard what?" Dipper said.

He could not believe it. He was shaking, terrified, but it was beginning to seem that the evidence of his own senses was in doubt. He took a deep breath, willing himself to relax, starting to loosen up.

Crash.

The door shook with the impact. Soos screamed, whirling around, backing up into Nate.

The door boomed again, over and over, growing louder and louder. There were rattles interspersed now, parts of the door mechanism and structure loosening, rivets popping. The metal was groaning.

Dipper had his hands over his ears, grimacing. Soos screamed again, rage and terror and pain mixing together. The crashes were coming closer and closer together now, impossibly loud.

"What is it?" Nate yelled at him.

He had no idea. How was he supposed to know? "Make it stop!" he screamed at him.

Nate stood by him, shaking his head, lost for answers.

Tambry had walked away from her console, Soos noticed. Her face was a blank mask, a sleepwalker's face. She walked slowly toward the door, seemingly oblivious to the thundering and vibration.

Dipper went after her. "What are you doing?" Tambry had reached the door, her hand held out. "No!"

Dipper dove toward her, grabbing her arm. Blankly, she tried to shake off his grip, but he had managed to get her into a wristlock, twisting her arm back.

She swung herself around toward Dipper, raising her other hand, her face furious now.

The pounding ceased abruptly. The quiet was brutal, frightening, a weight that descended upon the room. Soos' ears were ringing, feeling as though they had been stuffed with cotton wool.

Dipper and Tambry remained frozen in their violent dance.

Something lifted from Tambry. Her face cleared. She lowered her hand, staring at Dipper.

"In our current environment, Ms. Tambry," he said, "self-control is an asset."

Soos tried to slow his breathing, stop the shaking. He could not afford to be weak now. Put off the reaction as long as possible, he thought, he could spend some time healing in the tank and get the rest over with when they got back to Earth.

Tambry stared at Dipper. "I'm all right," she said. "Please."

Keeping his eyes on her, Dipper released the navigator and stepped back.

Somewhere in the distance, the pounding started again. This time it was moving away from them, deeper into the ship. Even at a distance, the sound terrified Soos. Something unknown was out there. A monster without explanation.

There was a loud beep from one of the consoles—the ship systems workstation, she remembered as she turned. A light was flashing. Nate left Soos and went over to the workstation, looking it over.

"What is it?" Dipper said.

Nate looked around, baffled. "The forward airlock."

Tambry keyed the radio. "Wendy, Robbie, Lee, any of you in the airlock?"

Wendy's voice came back, distracted. "That's a negative, Tam."

Soos' mind cleared for a moment, and he remembered, swearing at himself for forgetting in the first place.

"Mabel," he said.

There was a general scramble for the pressure door then, and to hell with whatever was out there. They left Tambry standing in the middle of the bridge, forgotten.

Dipper raced through the corridors, Nate and Soos trying to keep pace with him. He was growing frantic, wondering just what was going on with his sister. If she had been affected the way that Tambry had, there was no telling what she could be doing now.

They raced into the forward airlock bay.

Mabel was there, moving slowly, sleepwalking. She stepped into an open airlock, turning. She was not wearing a suit.

Dipper tried to increase his speed, running across the bay, screaming, "MABEL, NOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs, feeling the lining of his throat inflaming with the force of his shout.

Mabel stared at her brother, her eyes cold and dead. She reached out to the controls on the inside of the airlock.

The hatch hissed shut. Dipper slammed into it, screaming at Mabel, pounding his fists on the metal.

He slid to the floor.

* * *

><p><em>Well, the shit is about to hit the fan. Unfortunately, because the original chapter was so long, I had it split in two. So the next chapter will be upload tomorrow for those of you actively following this story. <em>

_On a different subject, do you folks like Aliens? And not the little green men saying "Take me to you leader. Earthling!", I'm talking about Facehuggers, Queens, Chestbursters, and Xenomorphs. Yeah. Those. Well if you do then have I got a story for you! Me and the ever talented EZB have started Gravity Falls' first legitimate Aliens adaption! And it is coming out . . . Quite well if I do say so myself. _

_But anyway! Do you like contests? Of course you do! Who doesn't?_ _I ask because__ EZB and I are offering a chance for you guys, the readers, to get something out of our story! I declared a challenge that was released to you wonderful people in chapter three, where we ask, essentially, 'WAHT'S IN THE FUCKIN' BOX?!'. Guess correctly, and you get to tell us to write a one-shot involving Gravity Falls of ANYTHING YOU WANT. Seriously. WenDip, an AU, uhh. . . . Stuffs! Anything! Cool right? Be warned though: It won't last forever. The contest will end once the thing in the box has been revealed. So act fast! The winner will be announced via PM on the day the chapter is released, so good luck to anyone who participates. So until then, stay awesome. and I will see YOU . . . in the next chapter. Bye-byAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! (An baby Xenomorph bursts out of TEi's chest, killing him. The Xenomorph looks around, hisses, and scurries off.)_


	14. Chapter 14

It was getting to be crowded out here, Wendy thought. She, Lee, and Robbie had ended up together on one section of the Lewis and Clark's hull, surrounded by an assortment of zero-g tools.

Lee and Robbie unbolted an access panel. Together they lifted it, moving it aside, letting it float nearby while they attended to the job at hand. The compartment beneath the panel was a mess of scorched wiring and battered components.

"We'll have to re-route through the port conduit to the APU," Lee said, shining a light down into the compartment.

Robbie grunted. "What about the accumulator?"

The radio pinged, and then Soos was saying, "Come in, Captain."

Wendy looked up from the work at hand, annoyed at the interruption.

"What's going on in there, Soos?"

"Mabel's in the airlock," Soos said.

Wendy froze. Nate had not been very hopeful about Mabel, and Dipper had basically entered a state of denial, hoping for the best, expecting the worst.

"What?" Wendy said.

Lee and Robbie were watching her intently, their work forgotten.

Soos said, "She's awake and in the airlock. Wendy, she's not wearing a suit."

Jesus Christ, Wendy thought, it just gets crazier. She wanted the insanity to stop just long enough for them to get home.

Grabbing a handhold, she swung herself to face Lee. "Stay here! Don't stop working!"

"Captain," Lee snapped back, "you need me on this!"

The last thing Wendy needed right now was for Lee to start grandstanding over Mabel. "Fix this ship, Lee, or we'll all die. I'll get her."

Wendy changed her position, orienting herself towards the bulk of the Event Horizon. Taking a deep breath and cursing her fortunes in this world, she kicked off.

She was not about to lose anyone, not now, not on this mission.

Not Mabel.

Soos worked frantically at the airlock control panel, trying everything he could think of, short of hammering on the panel with his fist. There was no response at all from the panel.

"She's engaged the override," he said, stepping back. Frustrated, he smacked his hand against the control panel.

"Can you shut it down?" Dipper asked.

"I'll try," Soos said. He turned, took a step, went to work on the access panel for the airlock. He had it open in a matter of moments, digging into the circuitry. All he needed was some way to screw up the outer door mechanism. If he could stop the outer door cycle, they could take their time getting the inner door open again.

Nate was peering at Mabel through the hatch window. Turning to Dipper, he said, "She's in some kind of trance. Try and make eye contact, talk her down. I'll be right back."

Nate turned and ran out of the airlock bay.

Dipper started hammering on the hatch, trying to snap Mabel out of her trance, or to at least get her attention. "Mabel!" he screamed, his throat feeling like liquid fire. "Open the door! Open the door Mabel, please!"

Mabel's expression did not change and she did not look at him. She reached out again, slowly, touching the control panel inside the airlock. She started to move, slowly, drifting sideways and up. She had executed a localized shutdown of the artificial gravity, a utility function that had been intended to help transition delicate cargo between zero-g and local gravity.

Mabel looked like a woman lost in a dream.

"Coming to her, Soos," Wendy said, wishing she had a full EVA thruster pack on her suit. "Gimme status."

She was using the Event Horizon as a means of propulsion, shoving herself from section to section. The huge ship was blurring by beneath him as he gained more and more velocity. She was going to have to shed some of that and change vectors sooner or later, and that was going to hurt.

"You better hurry," Soos said, his voice urgent. "She's engaged the override and we can't open the inner door."

Wendy swore, pushed herself onward.

Dipper was still hammering at the door, his hand bloody and raw. "The door, Mabel! Open the door!" He coughed, the effort of so much yelling taking its toll on him.

Mabel turned slowly around, to stare at the outer door of the airlock.

There was nothing on the other side of that door but space.

"Did you hear it?" Mabel said, suddenly, her voice carried through the airlock intercom. Her voice was flat, the voice of someone dead.

The hair stood up on the back of Dippers' neck. Soos came over to stand beside him, staring at Mabel.

"Yes," he said, willing to lie, to do anything if it would save his sister. "Yes, Mabel, we heard it."

"Keep her talking," Soos whispered.

Dipper nodded, sharply. "Do you know what it was?"

"It gets inside you," Mabel said, softly. There was no tension in her body. She hung in the microgravity like a mannequin. "It shows you things… horrible things…" A shuddering breath, almost a sob. "Can't describe it… there are no words…."

Tambry, on the bridge, had moved to the communications, workstation, sitting unmoving. The intraship intercom system was open, tied into the radio. She had not missed a moment of the conversation.

She sat rigid, listening, trying to keep her mind blank and empty.

"What, Mabel?" Dipper was saying. "What shows you?"

Then Mabel, now crying, said, "It won't stop, it goes on and on and on…."

"What does?" Dipper said.

Tambry closed her eyes.

"The dark inside me," Mabel said.

Tambry moaned. The tension went out of her. She leaned forward onto the console, her head in her hands.

The darkness was coming.

Wendy's breath was coming in hard ragged gasps now as she made her way along the hull of the Event Horizon. She had made one vector change already, and had the aching arms to show for it.

She sailed onward.

"It's inside and it eats and eats until there's nothing left," Mabel was moaning.

"'The dark inside'?" Dipper said, his voice shaking. "I don't understand."

"From the Other Place," Mabel said.

Wendy passed from shadow to light and back to shadow. Neptune turned beneath her, the Great Dark Spot malevolent at the edge of her vision.

"The other crew," Mabel said, softly. She lifted an arm, the movement causing her to turn slowly in the microgravity. "They're there, they're waiting for me. They're waiting for you. I won't go back there… I won't…."

Dipper pressed up against the airlock door, trying to keep his expression calm. There had to be some way to break through to Mabel, some way to make her continue to find her way out of this fugue or whatever it was that had overcome her.

"Mabel," he said, "look at me. Look at me, big sis, please! Open this door."

Nate was back, sprinting into the bay, his medkit in hand. He almost slammed into the airlock, gasping for breath.

Soos said, urgently, "I don't think he can talk her down."

Nate looked at Mabel, gently floating in the airlock, then at Soos. He stepped away from the airlock. "If she opens the outer door she'll turn inside-out."

Dipper was watching Mabel, his thoughts going haywire as tears streamed down his cheeks, his eyes puffy and red. Soos was still trying to do something with the airlock control circuit, his hands lost in a jumble of wiring and circuit modules, his face beading with sweat.

"Almost got it," he muttered.

"Come on, big sis," Dipper said, "open this door."

Mabel was staring at him now, her eyes devoid of spirit. He could not imagine what she might have experienced in the heart of the Core. Mabel had been changed, stripped of herself.

She raised a hand, touching the hatch window. "If you could see the things I've seen, you wouldn't try to stop me."

"That's not you talking," Dipper said, pressing his hand against the glass to align with Mabels', his heart breaking. "Come back to us. Come back to me, Mabes."

Hope surged in his as Mabel's hand moved, floating toward the switch that would open the inner airlock door. He tried to will her to make the final motion, throw the switch, open the door, get this nightmare ended.

Her hand moved again, stabbing at the outer door control.

"NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! MABBBEEEELLLLL!" Dipper screamed.

Warning lights flashed on, inside and outside of the airlock. A Klaxon honked warning, reverberant, even louder inside the airlock than outside in the bay. Mabel covered her ears with her hands, squeezed her eyes shut.

From somewhere, a computer voice, all modulated reason and no humanity: "Stand by for decompression. Thirty seconds."

Inside the airlock, Mabel opened her eyes, staring. Dipper gasped.

Mabel's eyes were clear, alive. Whatever had taken hold of her had been shaken off, at least for now.

She reached out with one hand, making her motion worse. "Bro-Bro…" she said, slowly, sounding confused, "Dipper, what are you doing?" She turned her head wildly, making her spinning motion worse. Dipper could see the realization strike. "Oh my gosh. Oh my God! OH MY GOD!" She lunged for the hatch.

Dipper whirled. "SOOS!"

Soos pulled back from the airlock access compartment, his expression horrified. "I can't! The inner door can't open once the outer door has been triggered! It would decompress the entire ship!"

The computer continued to count down, heedless of human dilemmas.

Mabel screamed, "Get me outta here, Dipper, PLEASE!" She swung a fist at the door, but all it did was make her bounce. "If that door opens, I'm gonna—oh God, my eyes! MY EYES!"

Dipper was losing his battle against hysteria, hanging on grimly. "We have to do something… oh God…"

Counting down.

Wendy caromed from one piece of superstructure to another, hurtling through space in a dizzying, sickening parabola, kicking off again.

"Captain," Soos said, "Mabel just activated the door! It's on a thirty-second delay!"

"Patch me through to her," Wendy said.

Kicking off again, hurtling along the endless Event Horizon. Nothing compressed about this ship, and never mind the origins of its name or its main drive unit.

She could hear the computer counting down.

"Mabel," Wendy said, her tone firm, authoritative, but still having a slight shake to it.

"RED!" Mabel gasped out, "Help me, help… tell them to let me in!"

Brusquely, Wendy said, "They can't do that, Mabel. Now listen carefully-"

Wendy came over the edge of the ship, caught herself on an antenna, swung over. The muscles in her right arm protested at the brutal misuse.

She kicked off again.

There. She could see the bulge of the airlock.

"I don't want to die!" Mabel screamed.

"You're not going to die!" Wendy snapped. She kicked, flew on. "Not today! Now, I want you to do exactly as I say and I'm gonna get you out of there, all right, kiddo?"

And I hope like hell that I'm not bullshitting you.

There was a low thump as the air pumps started. Mabel looked up, and around as air moved by her. The airlock was being evacuated rapidly.

"Oh God, it's starting," she cried.

"Mabel," Wendy said, her voice coming from the intercom speaker overhead, getting thinner, "I won't let you die. Okay? You're gonna be alright Baby Bear, I promise!"

Mabel was crying helplessly, the dark and the cold pressing in on her. Her tears flowed from her face, hung in the air. "HELP ME!" She cried.

She started to hyperventilate, trying to hold on to as much oxygen as she could.

"Tuck yourself into a crouched position," Wendy said. Her voice had a mother's authority, and Mabel tried to obey it, hurrying, pushing against the wall and huddling into a corner.

Her tears were turning to blood as the pressure dropped.

"My eyes," Mabel muttered. It felt as though someone was trying to push them from their sockets. She moaned with the pain.

"Shut 'em," Wendy yelled, her voice fading as the air went away. "Shut your eyes, tight as you can!"

"Five seconds," Soos said, his voice sounding muffled.

There was a low booming sound, as though something had hit the superstructure near the airlock.

"Exhale everything you've got, Mabes," Wendy was yelling. "We can't have any air in those lungs, blow it all out!"

Mabel had squeezed her eyes shut, clamping her hands over them. She could feel the blood, slick, sticky, too much of it, far too much of it.

"Oh God, oh God," she whimpered. She was going to die, she knew she was going to die. The darkness would have her, the voice would have her.

Somewhere in the distance, the last fading sound of Wendy's voice. "Now, Mabel! DO IT NOW!"

Mabel breathed out, hard, everything gone in one last spasmodic moment, one last silent scream.

The outer door slid open.

* * *

><p><em>Ok, I know I said I was gonna release this tomorrow, but I just couldn't wait! Enjoy!<em>


	15. Chapter 15

_Thanks to EZB for all the help and work on this chapter. If you haven't already done so, check out his story "The Return to Gravity Falls" and give that badass some love! DO ETT! Also be sure to check out a collab me and him are working on, simply called "Aliens", which you can find on EZB's profile. Plus, there's a special contest going on in chapter three, so be sure to check that out too._

* * *

><p>It was a matter of timing now.<p>

Wendy hunched down, watching the airlock, her concentration becoming absolute. She had about five meters to cross, she estimated.

The airlock opened.

There was a puff of vapor as the last of the atmosphere blew out, carrying Mabel with it. The engineer was curled up into a ball, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Wendy sprang up and outwards, pushing as hard as she could, grunting with the effort. She spread her arms as she leapt outward, seeing the brightness of Neptune.

She slammed into Mabel, tumbling them both back toward the ship. There was more pain as she struck the side of the airlock, but she disregarded it, turning herself, holding Mabel with one hand while she used the other to pull them both into the open airlock, keeping one boot pressed up against the side of the airlock in case the door decided to try and close on them.

They tumbled inside.

Wendy reached out and slapped the switch that closed the outer door, going more by gut instinct that anything else. The door closed, too slowly for her taste.

Mabel floated in the middle of the compartment, her veins bulging, pinkish ice covering her skin, her face covered with a layer of frozen blood that had streamed from her mouth, nose and eyes. Capillaries had burst everywhere in her face and hands, very likely in other places too. If she survived this experience, Mabel would spend some time looking like a road map of hell.

The outer door locked.

The count in Wendy's head told her five seconds had elapsed since the door had opened.

The airlock began to repressurize quickly. That might do more damage to Mabel, but that was a chance they had to take. Wendy despised the lack of options, but she was not about to abandon hope.

She reached out again and slapped the control that triggered the artificial gravity, cradling Mabel as she slowly dropped to the deck. Through the window in the hatch she could see the anxious faces of Dipper, Soos and Nate.

A green light. Wendy reached out, hit the switch to open the inner door, then flattened against the wall as Dipper and Nate rushed in.

"Oh God, Mabel …" Dipper said.

Nate went to one knee, his medkit open already. Dipper knelt on the other side, taking Mabel's wrist. Nate got Mabel's mouth open, slipped in a tube.

There was the hiss of oxygen.

"I've got a pulse," Dipper said. "She's alive." He reached out, pulled an instrument from Nate's medkit and unrolled a blood pressure cuff, slipping it over Mabel's bicep.

"Pressure?" Nate said.

Dipper looked terrified. "Forty over twenty and falling."

"She's crashing," Nate said, flatly.

Blood suddenly bubbled from Mabel's mouth and nose. She gasped desperately, choked, and then screamed hoarsely. Blood sprayed the airlock and spattered Dipper, Wendy and Soos.

"She can breathe," Nate said, his tone ironic. "That's good. Let's get her to Medical! Go, go!"

All three of them bent to pick up Mabel, Wendy not even stopping to get her helmet off.

* * *

><p>Tambry sat at the gravity drive console on the bridge, listening to voices in the air and watching a phantom spin on the display in front of her. She had tried to watch Neptune, but she could not focus on the planet for very long. She could have turned her attention to scanning for the rings of debris, or trying to locate the Neptunian moons, but she had no heart for that.<p>

Voices in the air.

Nate saying, "Intubate, pure oxygen feed, get the nitrogen out of her blood."

Then Dipper, almost frantic: "Her peritoneum has ruptured."

Wendy had managed quite a rescue, it seemed, but that was what she was good at.

It was too late, Tambry thought, too late in the day. She doubted that Wendy was as brilliant a rescuer as they would all need. They were drowning and no one realized it.

Nate again: "One thing at a time, let's keep her breathing. Start the drip, 15ccs fibrinogen…"

The computer model of the gateway swelled on the display before her, rendered out now, showing the hotspots and the magnetic flow. It was a live thing, breathing energy in and out, flowing from the Core at the heart of the ship.

Dipper, frightened, all professionalism gone, screamed: "MABEL! Oh Christ, she's bleeding out! Pressure's still dropping… she's going into arrhythmia! Oh, god! OH GOD, NO!"

They were losing one. In times past, everyone had been lost, all hands down with the ship. What was the point of fighting back, fighting to survive? The darkness swallowed everyone eventually, no matter how much they might be loved, no matter how valuable they were. In the end, the only way to deal with the darkness was on its own terms, at a dead run, giving in to that one last plunge into the unknown.

Nate, urgent: "We have to defib… clear!"

The bang of the defibrillator, the sound of a body convulsing under the power of electricity. In the end, medicine had not progressed far. The galvanic force was as much a going concern now as it had been when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had written Frankenstein. He with the most electron-volts wins the game.

The diagram drew Tambry in, seeping into the empty places where her soul had once lived. A live thing, it shifted before her eyes, compelling.

Gently, a lover's caress, she touched a switch. She felt the surge of power, the changes within the heart of the ship.

The screen cleared. Pristine text flashed up in place of the embedding diagram: Commencing gravity drive initialization process. Gravity drive will be primed for ignition in two hours.

* * *

><p>Lee and Robbie had remained outside, working as fast as possible on the Lewis and Clark. The rest, Tambry included, had congregated in the Gravity Couch Bay of the Event Horizon. The incident with airlock had been, for lack of a better word, a disaster. They had lost the help of one functioning crew member, and needed to keep an eye on her recovering state.<p>

Wendy was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. The sight of the woman strapped into the Gravity couch was disheartening. Mabel floated in the liquid as an apparition would drift in the captain's nightmares, suspended and silent, a deathly reminder of the dangerous not hundreds of feet away from her exact position.

"We were able to stabilize her," Nate was saying, "enough to get her into a tank. Though there was extremely extensive damage. She's lucky Soos said something. Otherwise she might not be here."

"She'll make it," Wendy said, firmly. "Good work". There would be no talk of the end now. They had clawed their way out of the grip of death itself, and Wendy would be damned if they started shifting towards the darkness. She looked at Soos. "How long?"

"CO2 levels will become toxic in four hours," Soos said. He looked as though he was ready to fall down at any second. She figured they all were in shock over Mabel… except for Tambry. Tambry seemed incapable of that sort of emotional investment.

Dipper was kneeling in front of Mabel's Gravity Couch, his face a mask of sheer grief and regret. The doctor had lost his grand composure. Almost losing Mabel finally had the young man broken, tears streaming down his face as his mind tore at the possibilities of loosing someone that close.

Wendy walked over to Soos, slowly, hating to do this to him now, hating the fact that she could not avoid it. If they were to survive, she needed everything he could possibly accumulate.

"Soos," she said, keeping her voice gentle, soft. The larger man looked around at her, his eyes big, red-rimmed, close to tears. Medical detachment could go only so far, she realized. "We need to know what happened to the last crew. Before it happens to us."

"I'll get back to the log," he said, his voice weak and creaky. He looked away from her, off into his own personal distance. He was getting the thousand-meter stare. "But on the bridge. I-I won't go back into Medical."

"Fine," Wendy said.

Soos walked away from her, leaving the Gravity Couch Bay. She wished there was something she could do for him. For everyone. Especially Dipper. The captain was not just a figure head; she was their leader. Wendy was to look out for these people. But at the moment she was not certain that he could do anything for any of them.

Tambry watched Soos leave, wondering what mission Wendy had sent him on this time. She knew he had been attached to Mabel, had tended to father the crew. It must be very difficult for him right now. But she thought that the person most affected was Dipper, who still hadn't move for his sister's side.

Dipper finally spoke up, and said, "Mabel said something about 'the dark inside me.' What does that mean?"

Dipper looked up solemnly at the tank. Mabels' face was a mess of veins and blood. It tore Dipper apart seeing his sibling in the state she was in. His entire conscious being demanded he look away. Nothing in his life could have prepared to see the broken features of his sister, barely alive. Looking away wasn't an option either, as he discovered. His neck muscles seemed to tight to pry his gaze away.

He heard Wendy say beside him, "I was hoping to ask you."

Without thinking, he said, "I don't know if it means anything."

He blinked, tears dropping. Her last words- meaningless to him.

Wendy had walked over to them. Dipper looked at her, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I know that this is hard, but I need your help right now."

Without waiting to give an answer, Dipper sniffed, turned and walked out of the Gravity Couch Bay. He could be useful on the bridge while the minutes ticked away.

He heard footsteps behind him, following down the corridor. Angry, he turned around. Wendy almost ran into him.

"Dipper, I want to know what caused that noise," Wendy said, her tone dark, almost threatening. "I want to know why one of my crew tried to throw herself out of the airlock."

"I don't know!" Dipper cried. "Thermal changes in the hull could have caused the metal to expand and contract very suddenly, causing reverberations'—"

"That's bullshit and you know it!" Wendy shouted. She waved a finger under Dipper's nose, making the scientist step back. "You built this fucking ship and all I've heard from you is **_BULLSHIT_**!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY!?" Dipper cried. "I don't know what to tell you!"

Wendy contained herself with an effort. "You said this ship's drive creates a gateway."

"Yes," Dipper said, trying to keep his patience.

"To what? Where did this ship go? Where did you send it?"

"I don't know," Dipper said. It was interesting how disarming honesty could be, considering the circumstances.

"Where has it been for the past seven years?" Wendy said, her tone darkening. Dipper's eyes glistened in the remaining tears for his sister, but he did not look away.

"I don't know."

Wendy was losing her temper again. " 'I don't know?' You're supposed to be the expert, and the only answer I've had from you is 'I don't know.' " Wendy grimaced, a woman trying desperately to get blood from a stone. "The 'Other Place,' what is that?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Dipper yelled, taking a step toward Wendy. This time it was the Captain's turn to step back. Dipper got himself under control, breathing deeply of the foul air, tears still glistening on his cheeks. "I don't know! There's a lot of things going on here that I don't understand! It's like I don't even know my own ship anymore!"

"I'm tired of this bullshit, Pines."

Wendy glared into the younger man's eyes. Her strength would not be tested by this man. His own gaze haltered, and he turned, placing his arms against the walls of the corridor. "Dipper, we're all scared here. We need someone to tell us what to expect, how to react, what to do. I can't do that; this isn't my ship." She took a step to him. "Pines?"

"Y-yes," Dipper crooked his head to spot her, not facing her fully. His gaze was empty and lost. Almost like that of his sister's, the man's eyes seemed devoid of thought or conclusion she had come to expect from the scientist with all the answers.

"Dipper," Wendy said calmly He finally turned to her. Her voice connected with the pleas in his eyes, desperate as the rest of her crew for answers. "We all need your help."

"I don't even recognize her anymore, Captain," Dipper's head trembled, wobbling about as his eyes darted around the darkened corridors. "She's not the same ship."

"Maybe not. But that makes you the only one who has a chance in hell to get our answers. I'm- hey," Wendy reached forward, grasping his shoulders, forcing him to look at her, dead in the eyes, "I'm depending on you, Dipper. Me, your sister, my crew- we're looking to you for some answers."

The scientists eyes cleared. She allowed her tempered gaze to linger in his own, the softer, brown eyes returning her favor. He was searching into her eyes for the answer she had asked him for, grappling at the idea he was no longer in control of the situation. Her fingers clenched his arms, firm and stead as he reached up and held her own in reply, a slow nod growing as he thought to her.

"I'll need some time. Diagnostics may help us here, but we can figure out what happened. I'm going to figure out what happened, and then we can get some help," Dipper told Wendy, struggling to return the same favor of strength she had supplied him.

"Good man," she told him, the faintest grin on her lips as she leant away. "Figure out what you need."

Wendy turned from the recovering man and started walking away. She would be needed elsewhere checking up on the progress for her ship for starters. Her feet echoed against the metal grating of the floor below her, rattling the air faintly.

A scream tore her concentration away. Wendy whirled her view down one of the corridors at a cross section. Something had just called her from there, she was certain. A person.

"Captain!"

Wendy spun again, this time behind her. The same voice called her.

This voice stirred her mind. The calling beg for mercy and help wasn't strange to her. She had heard of its wails before. Her eyes widened as again she heard it.

"Captain! Save me!"

She throat tightened. The call was helpless, desperate. On the edge of death itself, hanging by a loose tether of sanity. Then she smelt it. Cooked flesh and singed fabric. Melting steel and congealing wires of copper and silicon. Smoke and ash.

"CAPTAIN! PLEASE!"

Wendy Corduroy captain of the Lewis and Clark, found her breathing shallow. Sweat ran down the sides of her face, dripping off her chin. She was freezing, fear coursing through her as if it were her own blood. Her head spun, demanding a safe refuge from the growing cries she desperately tried to bury deep in her head. She moved for the corner of the cross section, and leaned her head to her resting arm.

"It's just a hallucination," Wendy reminded herself, her own strong voice crumbling under the echoing calls around her, "just a hallucination. Wendy, its just a-"

Death. Carnage. Tearing of flesh, ripping of bones, stretching of skin until it tore and split apart like fabric poorly painted red. Metal wrapped itself around bodies like coiling snakes. Eyes bulged in terror and panic: the universe screamed in torment.

Wendy gasped and fell away from the corner, tripping over her feet. In the center of the cross section she stared at the wall she had touched no more than a few seconds. Something had just flashed through her mind. What she had just seen was, unlike the now vanished calls around her, something never seen before in her life.

People. They had been people. Without cause, or reason, or a thought inside their eyes tearing each other a apart with their own hands. Guts had spilled and dark, crimson liquid had poured from their widening holes within their bodies like split fruit pouring their juices into a waiting cup. Pandemonium the likes she had never seen before.

She reached a junction, made a left turn.

"Don't leave me!"

The voice echoed along the corridors from somewhere in the distance. Wendy turned, her skin crawling, trying to figure out the direction it had come from.

"Where are you?" she shouted.

Her voice reverberated in the corridors, but the echoes were the only answer she received. She stepped backward, turning, stumbled over sections of piping on the floor.

"What do you want?" she shouted.

"WENDY! PLEASE HELP!" A hollow voice, dead for these years, screaming out a plea across time.

Wendy bent down, scooping up a short section of pipe, driven more by instinct than anything else. "Get out of my fucking head!" she screamed.

She hurled the pipe down the corridor she was facing, heard it clang as it hit, clattering as it bounced and rolled away.

Silence. There was an emptiness in her head now.

Wendy turned, her back against the corridor wall. She felt weak, weary.

Slowly, she slid down until she was sitting. She hunched up, putting her head in her hands, fighting the tears, the memories, the shame.

_Daddy_…

"Captain?"

Wendy spun around, a sharp breath passing her lips.

Dipper Pines stood above her, looking down to her with worry. His hand reached down for her own, and she took it, being lifted from the metal grates as she felt the beads of sweat fly from her face.

"Wendy, are you alright?"

"I..." Wendy looked around. The voice was gone for now. Even if the voice had departed to give her a pause in thought, she could not leave that passing flicker of what she had seen. It was like she had gazed into hell itself.

"I'm fine," she told Dipper. The man continued to stare at her, unnerved at her appearance. "Thanks Dipper. I'm okay."

"Did you just-"

"I said I'm fine," she repeated, finding the strength to cut him off with her commanding tone, daring him to deny her. He nodded and let go of her hands. "Get to work, Doctor. We need to get home, don't we?"

"Of course," Dipper nodded and walked on by. Wendy allowed him to pass, watching him go. A twinge of loneliness passed in her brain, and she realized she had wished for him to stay by her. This ship wasn't safe to walk alone.


	16. Chapter 16

The Gravity Couch Bay was deserted now, except for Mabel floating in his tank. Dipper walked in, went over to the tank, checked the readouts. They were going to have to figure out how to transfer Mabel to the Lewis and Clark eventually. Wendy was not planning to try to retrieve the Event Horizon.

"Any change?" Wendy said.

Dipper whirled around, surprised. Wendy smiled.

Dipper walked toward her. "No, no change," he said. There was a long pause.

Something was troubling Dipper. "I had Nate analyzed her blood samples. There's no evidence of excessive levels of carbon dioxide. Or anything else out of the ordinary."

Wendy laughed, a cold, grim sound that she knew would transmit to Dipper the depths of the defeat he felt. "Of course not. She just climbed into the airlock because she felt like it. Just one of those things." Wendy straightened up, angrily pushing against the hopelessness. "We almost lost her today. I will not lose another man."

Dipper raised an eyebrow, watching Wendy carefully. "Another man?"

Wendy nodded. She unzipped her flight suit slightly, reached inside, pulled out a small service medal, showed it to Dipper. She had kept it with her since it had been awarded to her in a service essentially devoid of pomp and circumstance. It served as a reminder.

"My father, Daniel Corduroy," Wendy said, softly. The memories flooded in again, just as they had in the corridor. "Big man, very tough to shake. He was with me on the Goliath. Four of us had made it to the lifeboat. He was still on board when the fire…"

Roaring around corners, across the deck, the bulkheads, the ceiling, a living thing that melted metal and sang with a monster's voice…

Dipper waited, silent.

"Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity?" Wendy went on, suddenly. "It's like a liquid, it slides over everything. He saw the fire and froze. Just stood there screaming." Wendy swallowed, remembering, her chest hollow, her eyes beginning to water.

"Screaming for me to save him."

"What did you do?"

Wendy was silent, staring.

Daniel, burning, screaming. It had been an oxygen fire. Fast and hot, from nothing to destruction in the time it took to draw a breath. Had the circumstances been slightly different, there would have been no survivors of the Goliath.

Wendy tried to get the words out, but it was hard, almost impossible. She had lived with this for too many years now, had thought she had the grief and rage stored away somewhere else.

She pushed against her block, determined, wiping her eyes. The truth needed to be told. "The only thing I could do," she said, finally, letting the images play. "I shut the lifeboat hatch. I left him behind. And then the fire hit him… and he was gone."

Crawling up Daniel's legs, along his arms, dripping over him like hot white rain….

She could not have gone back. Those in the lifeboat would have died along with Dan. The Board of Inquiry had commended Wendy for her forthright actions in saving the others. She did not tell them the complete circumstances of Daniel's death.

She had always wondered if she should have gone back, tried to retrieve her father. She knew that they would both have died, but it did not remove the guilt.

"I never told anyone until now," Wendy said, softly. "But this ship knew, Dipper. It knows about the Goliath, it knows about my dad. It knows our secrets. It knows what we're afraid of. It's in all our heads, and I don't know how long I can fight it." Wendy slumped, frustrated, not knowing what sort of sense she was making, if any. "Go ahead, say it. I'm losing my fucking mind."

Dipper continued watching Wendy. "Maybe," Dipper said, "maybe not."

Dipper's tone pulled Wendy out of her misery for a moment, gave her the suggestion of hope. "You know something, Pines."

Dipper licked his lips. He nodded towards the Gravity Couch Bay workstation.

"I've… I've been listening to the transmission again." Dipper walked toward the workstation. Wendy stood up and followed him. "And I think Tambry made a mistake in the translation."

"Go on," Wendy said.

Dipper tapped in commands, pulling up the filtered version of the recording USAC had picked up. Partway through it, as Wendy's nerves were jangling from the unholy racket, Dipper stopped the playback.

" I took a latin class once in high school. Tambry thought it said 'liberate me,'" Dipper said slowly. "'Save me.' But it's not 'me'… it's 'liberate Tu-temet.'" Dipper glanced down at the console, up at Wendy. "'Save yourself.'"

Wendy tried to untense, but she could not. "It's not a distress call. It's a warning."

"It gets worse," Dipper said. Wendy stared at him, saying nothing. How much worse could it get? "It's very hard to make out, but listen to this final part." Dipper started the recording again, and Wendy's nerves tightened another notch. If they made it out of here, she was going to have nightmares for years to come. "Do you hear it? Right there."

"Hear what?"

"The final words." Dipper hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. "They sound like 'ex inferis.' Inferis, the ablative case of inferi. 'From Hell.'"

" 'Save yourself from Hell.' " Wendy shook her head, trying to work all of this into something coherent. "First you tell me this ship is alive, now you're saying… what are you saying? This ship is possessed?"

Dipper was shaking his head. "I don't know." He glanced at the workstation again. "But if I'm right, this ship has passed beyond our universe, beyond reality. Who knows where it's been… what it's seen." He looked at Wendy, his expression full of disbelief. "And what it's brought back with it."

We had no answer for this and could find nothing to say that would make any sense. The things that had happened aboard the Event Horizon defied reason.

The intercom hissed as the circuit opened. Both Wendy and Dipper whirled at the sound.

"Captain?" It was Lee.

"Better be good news, Lee," Wendy said.

"Yes, ma'am," Lee replied. There was a jovial tone to his voice. "We are ready to repressurize the Clark and get the hell out of here."

Wendy could have kissed him.

Lee and Robbie remained on station on the hull of the Lewis and Clark, keeping an eye on their patches. Wendy suited up again and went down though the umbilicus, into the ship, heading for the bridge. All of the systems had been powered down, conserving energy until the repairs were complete.

Time to get on with it, Wendy thought. She reached out and turned a manual valve, opening the surviving atmospheric tanks.

"All right, Lee," she said.

"Cross your fingers," Lee said, but Wendy knew that was intended for Robbie's benefit.

Air arrived as a thin mist at first, fading away as the pressure increased and the air warmed up. Wendy stood stock-still, watching the readout for the EVA suit's exterior pressure sensor.

"It's holding," Robbie said. "She's holding!"

Calmly, a counterpoint to Robbie's excitement, Lee said, "We're still venting trace gasses. Gimme about twenty minutes to plug the hole."

"You're a lifesaver, Lee," Wendy said. Relief flooded her. "Twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes," she heard Robbie say. "We're going home."

"About goddamn time," Lee said.

Wendy smiled, undogged her helmet, lifting it off. She took a deep breath.  
>The air had a slight metallic tang to it, but it was nectar compared to the state of the Event Horizon's air.<p>

"Back in business," Wendy said to herself.

Her ship. Her rules.

The Event Horizon could go to hell.

They were running out of time and she was getting nowhere.

Soos frowned angrily at the sciences workstation display, tempted to smack the thing with his fist to see if that would achieve anything. The log was stubbornly refusing to resolve into anything useful. He was tired and he hated spending his time doing this—he just wanted to get out of here and go home.

He might even resign from USAC, try and make his way as an groundhog.

Denny needed him.

Rapidly, he typed in another set of instructions and smacked the enter key with more force than necessary. He stood up, stretched, not that this helped his aching back in any way, and turned to Nate, who was busy at the other side of the bridge.

"You got any coffee?" Soos said.

Nate looked around, nodded. "It's cold."

"I don't care," he said.

He went over to Nate, picked up a mug, filled it halfway. If it was intolerable, he could probably find some way of warming it up. The bridge had to have a microwave, he figured, considering how much other stuff had been crammed into it.

He turned back to his workstation. To his surprise, something was actually happening with the log video. The computer was finally managing to break through the signal noise, making something of the recording.

The process was rapid now. Colors blurred, changed, solidified. Images began to form. There was movement. There was…

Soos felt numb, boneless. The coffee mug slipped from his fingers, shattering on the deck, coffee spilling over his boots.

"Nate," he whispered.

Nate turned, left his seat, stood by Soos, staring. "Oh my god," he said, his voice hushed. He turned again, got to the intercom. "Wendy …

WENDY!"

Soos somehow found a seat, sat down heavily, stared out of the bridge windows at Neptune. He tried to empty his mind and wash away the things he had seen, but he knew that would be impossible.

He closed his eyes. Tears streamed down his face.

Wendy stood behind Nate, watching the screen.

Nate had not been particularly coherent in his message to her, but he had somehow managed to get the point across—he had managed to clear up the scrambled log entry.

Dipper, Tambry and Robbie had arrived just after Wendy and now stood to either side of her.

Soos was sitting in another bridge seat, not looking at the screen. He could not bear seeing the log playback.

Wendy couldn't believe what she was seeing, not quite knowing how to react to it, other than with disgust and horror.

The image on the display was flickering and rolling still, despite the best efforts of the software. As far as Wendy was concerned, it was too clear.

There were four of the Event Horizon's crew in the image, including the captain. To one side of him, a crew member was somehow contorting himself impossibly, his right arm twisted, his head tilting back. His features were unrecognizable.

Dipper blanched and looked away.

Continuing the impossible motions, the man shoved his hand into his mouth.

There was a distant wet sound. Wendy could see the man's shoulder loosening, dislocating.

There was blood everywhere in the image. So much blood.

Beyond the captain, a man and a woman were engaged in frantic sex, she wrapped around him as he rammed himself into her. Both of them were covered in blood.

She had dug her fingernails into his back, tearing into the flesh, leaving gory tears that streamed blood down his back, though he seemed oblivious to either pain or injury.

The other man had now forced a good part of his arm down his throat. More blood there, streaming out from his mouth, from his nose.

The captain turned, smiling.

The woman turned her head, opening her mouth. In a blur of motion, she drove her face into her partner's neck, biting down, tearing. A chunk of bleeding flesh fell and struck the deck. Blood pumped freely, spraying her, drenching his shoulder, pouring down his arm. She drove into the wound again, heedless of the blood, tearing the wound wider. His head lolled to one side, loose in death. Yet he did not cease his maniacal thrusting.

Wendy wanted to turn away, to shut off the playback, to end it now, but she had to know, had to see it all if she had any hope of ever understanding what had happened here.

The man with his arm down his own throat had continued his contortions.

Wendy, sickened, could not imagine what he was trying to achieve, what he was being driven to.

The question was answered a few moments later.

With soft, glutinous sounds, the man withdrew his arm. Blood bubbled up, a torrent of it. He had grasped a handful of his innards, pulling them up, releasing them to fall wetly at his feet while he swayed, dripping blood and flesh, dead eyes staring into the distance.

The woman bit again and again as her dead partner continued his thrusting.

She made no move to release him or push him away.

The captain turned.

In the palms of the captain's hands, nestled in blood, were his eyes, held out now like an offering. Where his eyes had been were empty sockets, lined with torn flesh. Blood oozed down over his cheeks, around his mouth, over his chin.

The captain opened his mouth slowly, seeming almost exultant. His lips moved, forming words. In a deep, strange voice that was nothing like the one Wendy had heard on the earlier log entries, the captain said, "Liberate tu-Temet ex inferis…."

She could take no more. Wendy reached out, slapping the workstation, shutting the video playback off.

There was silence on the bridge.

"We're leaving," Wendy said, her voice flat. "

Tambry stepped in front of her, determined. "We can't leave. We were given specific orders —"

"To rescue the crew and salvage the ship," Wendy said, wishing Tambry would get the hell out of her face, the hell out of her way, maybe just cease to be.

"The crew is dead, Tambry. This ship killed them."

Tambry was not about to be put off. "We came here to do a job."

"We are aborting, Tambry," Wendy said, as coldly as she could. Tambry had watched the log playback and she could still beg for the life of this evil ship? "Take one last look around."

Ignoring Tambry, she turned to the others. "Dipper, download all the files from the Event Horizon's computers. Natw, get Mabel transferred to the Clark—"

"We'll have to move the tank," Nate said.

"Then move the tank." Nate nodded and left the bridge, moving fast. "Soos, get the CO2 scrubbers back into the Clark."

Tambry was in her face again, her expression agonized. "Don't do this."

"It's done," Wendy snapped.

She turned and walked off the bridge.


	17. Chapter 17

Tambry had a death wish, Wendy was sure of it. The navigator just could not let things be, would not let go and get on with her life. Now she was coming after Wendy again, chasing her down the corridor.

Wendy let Tambry catch up, then turned, staring at her.

Without missing a beat, Tambry snapped, "What about the ship? We can't just leave her—"

"I have no intention of leaving her," Wendy said, using the coldest, angriest voice she could summon up. It was a voice that could cow any crew member foolish enough to cause it to be summoned. Tambry didn't even flinch. "I will take the Lewis and Clark to a safe distance and then launch tac missiles at the Event Horizon until I am satisfied that she has been vaporized." She glared at Tambry for a long moment. "Fuck this ship."

"You can't just destroy her!" Tambry cried.

"Watch me," Wendy said, and she turned away from Tambry, hoping that this would be the end of it, knowing it was not.

Tambry lunged at Wendy, grabbing hold of her flight suit and turning her around abruptly. The navigator had a savagely angry look to her. Wendy lifted her arms, breaking Tambry's hold on her, slamming the navigator back into the bulkhead, leaning over her.

Once again, Tambry was not cowed. She stared at Wendy, challenging, angry, willing to fight. Wendy raised a fist, willing to end it there and then, even if it meant having to patch Tambry up and ship her back under medical conditions. So it would be one more thing to try and explain….

The lights went out. After a very brief pause, the emergency lighting flickered on, turning the corridor into a place of shadows.

"Wendy, come in," Dipper, over the intercom, aggravated.

Wendy lowered her fist and pushed Tambry away from her, backing away until she found the nearest intercom panel. "Dipper, what's going on?"

"We lost main power again," Dipper said. More than aggravation now. There was fear and anger in his voice. He knew as well as she did that these power losses were nothing to do with the state of the Event Horizon.

Tambry was barely visible in the darkness now, though Wendy could see her eyes well enough. Focused, burning with hatred.

"Goddammit!" Wendy snapped, more at Tambry than at Dipper. "Dipper, get those files and vacate. I want off this ship."

She backed away from the intercom.

Tambry was moving back into the shadows now, even her eyes fading into the gloom. Wendy hated the lunatic design of this ship, hated the flying buttresses and faux-Gothic arches, casting pools of darkness everywhere under the emergency lighting.

"You can't leave," Tambry whispered, echoing in the darkness. "She won't let you."

Wendy walked toward the navigator, but she was having trouble seeing her now. "Just get your gear back onto the Lewis and Clark or you'll find yourself looking for a ride home."

Tambry was gone, like smoke in a breeze, vanished in the darkness. Inwardly Wendy raged, wondering how Tambry could pull a stunt like this, could get away from her.

"I am home," Tambry whispered, but it seemed as though the voice came from all around her now.

The main lights suddenly flared up, drenching the corridor in halogen brightness. Wendy ran forward, stopped, looking around. Tambry was nowhere in sight. She might as well have never been there.

"Tambry?" she called. "Tambry!" .

No answer but echoes.

She went back to the intercom, slammed the side of her fist into it, not caring if she broke it. "All hands. Tambry is missing. I want her found and contained."

She set off jogging in the direction she had last seen Tambry, not expecting to find the navigator, intending mayhem if she did.


	18. Chapter 18

Robbie had joined Soos on the Event Horizon, racing through the ship to retrieve all of the CO2 scrubbers they had used to try keeping the air somehow breathable. They would still be useful on the Lewis and Clark, giving them enough time to get started on the voyage back home and to get help once they were close to Daylight Station.

They worked their way steadily down into the Second Containment, both frustrated at the distribution of the cylinders, both aware that they would need almost every one of them. Spacecraft designers had not progressed far beyond the Apollo days when it came to processing atmosphere.

Robbie was yanking cylinders out of a wall compartment while Soos went down to retrieve the last of them. Perversely enough, the scrubber compartment had been placed directly under the Core.

"Let's go, let's go," Robbie was saying, pulling a last cylinder out, getting it boxed. "This place freaks me out."

"You want to suffocate on the ride home?" Soos called up to him. He ducked down, calling up to him, "Last one!"

The cylinder was stubborn, refusing to come out as easily as it had gone in.

"Come on," Robbie called.

"Come ON!" Soo growled, hauling back. The cylinder slipped free suddenly, offbalancing him. He lost his grip on the scrubber, missing it as it fell into the coolant around his feet, disappearing from sight. "Dang it!"

"Leave it," Robbie called down. "We don't have time, let's go!"

The hell with it. He bent down and fished around, getting hold of the end of the cylinder, pulling it free of the muck. Not wasting time in gloating to Robbie, he turned around and got back up to the storage boxes, packing the slick cylinder away. Robbie had lost a cylinder in the sludge himself, but they could manage without it.

They finished packing up as quickly as they could, each taking a case of the scrubbers and heading out of the Second Containment and into the corridor.

The case was heavy, and Soos found himself falling behind Robbie, who loped ahead like a man possessed. He decided he was not going to worry about it—Robbie was halfway to crazy anyway, and only Wendy was capable of keeping up with the man.

He took a deep breath, praying that their ordeal would be over soon.

There was a giggle behind him, childlike, echoing.

He stopped, shocked. His heart pounded.

In a whisper, he said, "Denny?" He turned back to look down to the Second Containment. He could still see the Core from here, a dark shape within the darkness. There was nothing else to see.

He started to turn back, aware that he had lost sight of Robbie.

At the corner of his vision, he saw a swift movement, a tiny figure that dashed across the Second Containment's outer area. It couldn't be….

"Denny?" he said again, his voice barely even a whisper. His head was filling with fog again. Something was wrong here, he knew that. He turned back. "Robbie?"

Robbie was gone. He was more than likely halfway to the main airlock by now, unaware that he had stopped.

He had to know.

He put down the scrubber case and started back toward the Second Containment, looking from side to side. There was nothing to be seen.

Another giggle. There was the scrape of metal upon metal.

Soos crept forward, trying to see into the deep shadows. "Den…?" he whispered.

There was an open access panel in the outer area of the Second Containment.

Soos bent down, trying to see inside. It was dark in there, the length of the duct reflecting the little light that there was.

He tried to clear his mind. How could Denny have been brought here? Wendy was right, he knew that. The ship used the dark corners to get at them, and here was his, in the form of Denny. He had loved him always… and he had fled from him too, gone back to space when he should have stayed with him, stayed around to help him.

"Daddy…" A plaintive voice, so far away.

He had left him behind on Earth and this evil ship had somehow reached out and brought him here, into its dark heart.

He could not allow Denny to be taken by this monster. His son deserved a better fate than this, a better existence than the one he had afforded him.

He climbed into the service duct, ducking his head. "Den…?" he called.

He had to move along almost crab-fashion, but his determination made him quick. Tambry had been stuck in one of these service ducts, he remembered, cramped down and in the dark when the lights had gone out. He wondered what she had seen.

He stopped at a junction, looking both ways before continuing. He wished, desperately, that he had thought to pick up a flashlight before coming in here. There was no way of knowing what else might be in here besides Denny.

He had an involuntary flash of memory, the log playback cascading through his mind, and his stomach turned. He fought it down, kept going.

There was a whisper behind him that could have been Denny's voice. He turned around, seeing nothing. There was a sound behind him at the junction, something like running feet, and he turned back again.

Nothing.

This time the whisper was in front of him. He eased across the junction, looking to either side again.

"Denny?" he called, moving on. "Denny, come to Daddy."

He knew the ship could be playing a game with him, but he could not be certain of that. If it had somehow brought Denny here…

A child laughing, amused, echoing in the distance. He continued onward, trailing it. He came to a vertical shaft. The laughter echoed down the shaft now, clear and bright. He straightened up, looking up the shaft.

No choice. He began climbing the ladder, moving steadily up the shaft. The laughter was becoming clearer and clearer the higher he climbed.

"Hold on," he said, "Daddy's coming."

His arms and legs ached beyond belief, but he would not let the pain stop him. Not now, not while he had a chance to save his son from the Event Horizon. The shaft ended at a catwalk. He pulled himself up onto the icy metal and stood up, looking around. He had no idea where he was in the ship, hoping only that he could get back to the Lewis and Clark once he had retrieved Denny.

Great machinery rose on either side of him, humming with the ugly sound of harnessed energy. The machines were dark, shining dimly under low lighting.

The catwalk wove between the machines, the end invisible in the gloom.

Ahead of him a small figure was running.

"Den?" he called.

The lights flickered, reddened. The low, angry hum of the machines deepened in tone, making his head hurt. He felt the sound in the pit of his stomach.

He ran forward, came to a junction, turned wildly around, searching.

Denny was standing a few feet away, barely visible in the dimming light.

"Denny?" he said.

He was standing.

"Daddy," he said.

The ship had brought him here, given him this. He no longer knew whether he should laugh or cry. All he wanted was to get him out of here, make him safe.

The lights flickered.

He eased ahead. "You can walk," he whispered, staring, "Denny, you can walk… oh, my boy…"

The tears were starting now. All he could think of was Denny, of getting him out. Another few steps and he could get him out.

"Wanna show you, Daddy," Denny said, holding out his arms to him, just like he had held his arms out at his birthday party, "wanna show you something—"

Another step and he could hold on to him.

The catwalk disappeared from beneath him. Screaming, he fell, plunging down. There was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to save him. He turned over in midair, seeing the darkness of the Core, then passing it, turning again.

He slammed into the deck in front of the Core, feeling his body bend and splinter, the pain terrible for a few moments before it faded into a general numbness. He could not move, could not feel anything. His breath came raggedly, suffused with blood.

"Denny," he whispered. A pool of blood was spreading out from under him.

Even if he was found now, he knew that nothing could be done for him. He had fallen too far, too hard, there was too much damage.

He wished he could move.

Twenty meters above him, he could see Denny looking down at him, clapping his hands.

He giggled.


	19. Chapter 19

_This is my ship now,_ Tambry thought, walking through the darkness. _My ship. My rules._

The Event Horizon had its hooks in her heart, she knew that. She refused to accept the possibility that she wishes could be irrational. Far from it, in fact: her desires were in accordance with those of USAC, to retrieve the ship and resolve the mystery.

Wendy was a madwoman, driven by a terror of the dark. She had no way of knowing what had happened here, what that bizarre log entry meant. For all Wendy knew, or could know, the log entry had been an elaborate fake, hidden behind a blind of signal noise. On the basis of this, Wendy was willing to destroy the Event Horizon. Billions of dollars had gone into the project, along with millions of man-hours and astonishing amounts of resources.

She walked through the darkness of the First Containment, into the separator tube. The sections spun around her, their vibrations feeding through her body.

Good men had poured their lives into this vessel, and had dedicated themselves to its development and construction. It would seem that the lives of its first crew had been sacrificed in the course of its maiden voyage, lost in the headlong rush of some kind of madness. The Event Horizon had been a story of blood and pain…

And Thompson. Once he was gone, Tambry had become a dead woman, walking through the days. One day her body would have caught up with her mind and she would simply have stopped, shutting down like an obsolete piece of equipment. USAC had not been willing to fund another grand experiment in starflight, not without knowing just why the first one had culminated in tremendous and embarrassing failure without even basic telemetry to show for it.

The return of the Event Horizon had been her resurrection. She was not going to walk away and die again, spending her days as a zombie until her heart ceased beating.

She walked past an abandoned CO 2 scrubber case, incurious. Let Wendy do what she would….

She passed into the Second Containment, passing an open service duct, unable to recall if she had closed up the one she had been in. Perhaps not. It did not matter, anyway, not now. What mattered now was completing the jump, proving the point.

She walked down toward the Core.

She stopped, staring, her mind working without formulating anything.

"Oh no," she whispered, dismayed. "Soos…." Even in the gloom, she recognized him. He seemed to have fallen from a great height, considering the way his body was twisted. She looked up, seeing an open service access overhead, one that would have been accessible from the magnetic containment generator bay.

She went down to him, crouched down, tried to figure out what she should do.

His eyes were open, black as a result of the fall, and he was not breathing.

There was a lot of blood, a lot of damage, and she doubted that he had lived long after the impact, if he had survived the fall at all.

Soos had been kind to her. She had no friends in this world, and she was always grateful for a little kindness here and there. He had shown her that.

She grieved for his son, back on Earth.

She stood up, looking down at Soos' body, wondering if she should report this immediately, or let it pass. Wendy would blame her, either way.

"Tambry," a familiar voice whispered.

Slowly, unwilling, she looked up.

Thompson was standing before the Core, a pale reflection with eyes of milk.

His hair hung around him as though immersed in water. He was naked, water dripping from him, and he was radiant with cold.

Tambry stared, her eyes widening.

Reality blinked and time turned upon its head.

Tambry looked frantically around. They were back on Daylight Station, back in her past.

Tambry turned back to her. "Thompson," she said, but the reaction she had hoped for was not there. She walked towards a bed where he lay. "Thompson, it's Tambry. I'm home…."

She reached out.

Reality blinked and there was the sound of water running.

She turned her head.

Thompson stood in the bathroom, brushing his teeth with methodical strokes.

She glanced back at the bed, but it was empty, unmade, unwashed. She had hardly been there, working herself into a stupor.

These were moments in time.

She could not change them. She knew that, knew all of the theoretical physics behind the laws of the immutability of time. She walked toward him, reaching out.

"I know I wasn't there for you," she said softly, slowly, despising this sudden flood of platitudes, hating herself with each word, angry at a universe that could be so cruel as to do this to her. "I'm sorry. I let my work come between us, but I'm here now, I'm here. If you could just let me hold you. I've been—"

Reality blinked, sweeping away her words, her thoughts, sickening her in the transition. Her pulse raced, and she felt the surge of adrenaline. Time was sliding beneath her, there was no time….

Thompson sat on the closed toilet, carefully shaving his chin with his straight razor, his strokes fine and even. He had always been good at that, teasing her in the early days when she worried that he would cut himself.

Time was moving and she was growing frantic. If he could hear her, if she could touch him, stop him, anything…

"Thompson, please don't do this," she said, trying to make him hear; he carried on, oblivious. "We don't have to stay here, we can go somewhere else."

Gentle stroke after gentle stroke, wanting, to look his best. She should have done this, should have said these words to him, should have taken the actions that would have made a difference. Earth was not the best place to live, but it would have been better than this. "Another place, anywhere you want to go, just don't do this. I've been so—"

Reality blinked and she swayed on her feet, trying to keep up, trying to make it stop. More water was running, a bathtub filling with steaming water.

He sat by the tub as it filled, idly testing the water with his fingers.

"Oh God, Thompson, no!" she screamed, but he did not hear her, could not see her. She seemed to be watching through glass, unable to go far enough to have an effect. "I'm pleading with you, please, please don't…" Tears streamed down her face. She had not known she had so much emotion in her. Yet who would have thought the woman to have had so much blood in her?"Not this, not again, please, I've been—"

Reality blinked and her soul twisted.

The razor touched his wrist, slid down and along. Blood flowed freely, like running water. Then the other wrist, harder this time, difficult holding the razor in the left hand, especially now.

The razor dropped to the floor.

Reality blinked and she was standing by the bathtub, looking down at him, his hair floating in a wreath around his pale face. The water had turned a deep shade of red. Thompson was gone.

Gone.

She was alone.

She fell to her knees, weeping.

"I've been so alone," she whispered, "so alone…"

"Tambry," he said, and reality blinked.

She looked up. Now he was standing in front of her. The Core rose behind him, a dark setting for his pale, wet body.

He fell against her, her face burning with the radiant cold from his belly.

Pain shook her, tumultuous and terrible. Her weeping turned to enormous sobs, grief and terror mingling.

He touched her face, his fingers burning, stroking.

She looked up.

"It's all right," he said, "it's all right. You'll never be alone again. You're with me now, you're with me, and I have such wonderful things to show you…."

He touched her cheek.

Gently, his cold fingers reached for her eyes.

Reality blinked.

Tambry raised her hands to her eyes. Her nails sank into the flesh, tearing.

Blood streamed down her face.

She began to shriek, releasing the pain, the anguish, the terror.

The rage.

_**I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds….**_

Exultant, she was reborn.


	20. Chapter 20

Lee hung head down over the ad hoc weld on the baffle plate, making one last check for flaws. As far as he could tell, everything here was just, well, peachy. So he was a perfectionist. _And Robbie can kiss my happy ass_, he thought.

"Solid as a rock," he said aloud.

Robbie, being a pain in the ass and an intrusion into the sacred space of his helmet, said, "How much longer you gonna take, Lee? I want to get out of here."

Lee sighed. Robbie could be such a humorless dork at times. "Zip that shit," he said. "I'm done. Let me secure my tools, be two minutes, tops."

"Roger that," Lee said, and cut the connection.

_Shithead_, Lee thought sourly. He had better be careful what he said—in the end Robbie was the one getting them home.

Done with Lee, Robbie turned his attention to unloading CO2 scrubbers, wondering where Soos had got to. If he didn't show up soon, he was going to have to go back to the Event Horizon and find him, and that was something he did not want to do.

He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it.

"Soos," he said, "it's about goddamn time—"

It was Tambry, not Soos. Tambry had been aboard the Lewis and Clark, probably heading out here when the Captain had been calling for them to watch out for the navigator.

_Figures it would be my watch_, Robbie thought. He had had his fill of this mission, of that ship, and of Tambry.

Tambry ducked around a corner, head down. In a moment she was into the umbilicus, moving like a madwoman as soon as she hit microgravity.

"Tambry, hey, Tambry!" Robbie shouted. "Get your ass back on board! Tambry!"

Tambry ignored him, spidering up the length of the umbilicus toward the Event Horizon.

Robbie keyed his radio, furious now. He could have happily throttled Tambry.

Keeping up with the navigator was turning out to be worse than cat-herding.

"Captain, come in…. Captain…"

Robbie on the radio, sounding none too happy. The tone of his voice worried Wendy. She slowed from the fast jog she had been maintaining along the Event Horizon's main corridor and found an intercom panel, keying it on.

"Go ahead, Robbie," she said.

"I just saw Tambry messing around on the Clark," Robbie said.

Wendy sighed. _What the hell is she up to now?_

Something popped and hissed nearby, and Wendy turned her head to see.

Overhead, crudely severed, stripped wires were touching an exposed electronic circuit, shorting out with a small shower of sparks. It looked as though something had been yanked roughly out of that spot.

She shook her head, starting to turn back to the intercom.

A small box, closer to the floor, caught her eye, the explosives symbol standing out.

She turned to the intercom. "Robbie, get the fuck outta of there!"

"Come again?" Robbie sounded startled.

"One of the explosives is missing from the corridor," She looked up again as the wiring began piping more frantically out. "Tambry could have put it on the Clark."

Robbie took a step back, going cold. _That crazy, psychopathic, **BITCH!**_

"Get off the Clark now and wait for me at the main airlock," Wendy said.

"No, no, we just got her back together," Robbie moaned.

"Get the fuck out of there NOW!" Wendy snapped.

_You know I can't do that, Captain_, Robbie thought, bolting from the airlock and racing into the Lewis and Clark. There would not be much time, but maybe there was enough. If he could get the charge out into space, away from the ship, most of the explosive force would be wasted, shrapnel being the only problem then.

He ran into the crew quarters, trying to figure out where the navigator could have put the case, ripping open lockers and spilling their contents to the floor.

"Where is it…?" he muttered, emptying Soos's locker, sending his vid unit flying, not caring how much damage he did. Soos could get mad at him later. "Where is it?"

"Robbie?" Wendy was yelling at the intercom, but Robbie was not answering him. The stupid, crazy bastard! "Robbie! Fuck!" She smashed her fist into the intercom panel, then turned and ran down the corridor, heading for the airlock, heading for her ship.

She was going to be too late, she knew it.

Robbie plowed on through the Lewis and Clark. He pulled open a storage locker, started to reach in.

Something was beeping.

"I gotcha!" he said, and started pulling out the contents of the locker. "I gotcha! HAHA!"

Almost ecstatic, he grabbed a duffel bag that was sitting on the floor, yanking it out. The beeping was louder, clearer. He quickly opened the bag, letting clothing fall to the floor.

The explosive charge was nestled in the clothing like a wicked uncle's idea of an Easter egg, a warning light on top blinking in time with the beeps. The flashing and beeping had grown more rapid in the past seconds—the charge was reaching the end of its countdown.

The beeps stopped. A steady tone sounded.

Robbie sat back, closing his eyes and sighing.

No time to prepare to—

Wendy raced into the airlock bay.

Thunder rumbled through the air, and she screamed in negation even as the thunder faded and a wave of heat and light slammed her back into the corridor.

Klaxons sounded and she could hear the sound of pressure doors slamming as she tried to pick herself up from the deck.

Through the windows, white light had momentarily replaced the blue of Neptune.

The explosion was silent in the vacuum, opening out of the Lewis and Clark's midsection like a flower of light. The force of the blast tore the ship into two ragged pieces, the drive section spinning away with fuel trailing and flaring, the forward section beginning a slow tumble as it passed over the Event Horizon.

Lee clung desperately to a stanchion, praying that none of the shrapnel from the blast would puncture his suit.

The Event Horizon receded into the distance.

Wendy walked slowly forward, staring through the airlock bay windows as pieces of her ship tumbled away. Metal shards struck the window, bounced off, leaving no more than some small scratches.

The drive section was tumbling into Neptune's atmosphere. She doubted it would be long before it detonated, providing that enough fuel remained.

The nose section had tumbled past the Event Horizon and out of sight.

Her ship was dead.

Her crew was dying.

Wendy turned and walked slowly to an intercom. She keyed it, turning so that she could see the drive section falling.

"Nate," she said, her voice soft with his grief and rage.

"What's happened?" Nate said.

"The Clark's gone." There was a flash of white light. The drive section was disintegrating. "Robbie and Lee are dead. It was Tambry. You see her, you take her out."

Nate had finished tidying up in Medical, downloading the med logs and getting his equipment in shape. Now he stood by the intercom, frozen, rage slowly rising as he considered Tambry's actions.

"Understood," he said, finally. He was capable of killing, especially when the target was murderously insane.

"Be careful," Wendy said.

"I can take care of Tambry," Nate said.

He turned around, intending to look for a reasonable weapon.

Tambry was waiting for him, smiling. Her face was covered in dried blood, her eye sockets nothing more than two bloody holes, still oozing a little.

Nate started to scream, but Tambry's red right hand slammed into his throat, silencing him. Pain flared into his head.

There was an odd sound from DJ, muffled by the intercom.

Something crashing, like steel and glass falling to the deck.

Tambry.

Nate kicked, fighting away from her, but it was no use. Tambry tore at him with a terrifying strength, her lack of eyes no handicap. Nate was picked up, slammed into an examination table, picked up again, sent flying through the air, smashed helplessly into storage cabinets.

Tambry strode through the carnage, bending down to pick Nate up. The doctor stared up at his tormenter, blood on his lips.

Tambry smiled.

She turned Nate around, pulled back his head.

Nate closed his eyes.

In a swift, exact motion, Tambry cut Nate's throat from ear to ear, letting the blood spray for a few moments.

She released the corpse, putting aside the scalpel she had used, and turned her attention to cabinets filled with surgical instruments. From one she took surgical needles. From another she took thread.

Sitting down to work, she began threading a needle.

Wendy was still trying to get a response over the intercom. Frantic, she changed the channel, keyed it again.

"Nate? Nate, come in."

The intercom hissed.

"I told you," Tambry said, her voice soft and strange. "She won't let you leave."

Wendy swore and ran out of the airlock bay.


	21. Chapter 21

Wendy raced through the Event Horizon, driven beyond exhaustion, knowing that if she survived now, she would pay for her efforts.

She reached Medical, barely allowed the hatch time to open.

She stopped, staring.

"Nate," she whispered, staring. "Oh God."

There was blood everywhere, trays toppled, instruments scattered.

Nate had been suspended in a cocoon of bandages and surgical tape, hanging over an operating table at the far end of the medical bay. His throat gaped open.

Wendy walked closer.

Nate's midsection had been opened neatly. He had been eviscerated, his organs placed in an orderly fashion on the open surface of the table.

Wendy fled from Medical, her mind blurring. Somewhere, she found a tool locker with a nailgun inside, a poor tool overall, but functional enough for killing Tambry.

Resolution clearing her mind, she set off for the bridge.

* * *

><p>Lee figured he was either shaking off the panic and terror or falling into complete hysteria when it occurred to him that there were surfers back on Earth who would kill to get this sort of ride. Would have curled my hair if it wasn't already.<p>

Then he was back in the world, ready to deal with the problem at hand.

Robbie was gone, that much he knew from the radio transmissions. The crazy bastard had tried to get the bomb off the ship, against Wendy's orders.

It was, Lee decided, a mess.

The Event Horizon was in the distance now. The wreckage of the Lewis and Clark's front section had passed over the starship and away from Neptune. The orbit would stabilize eventually and then start decaying. Given the location of the bomb, he figured that the drive section had been kicked back toward Neptune and was most likely vaporized by now.

Time to go.

He oriented himself carefully, trying to avoid pushing himself away from the wreckage. His boots clamped firmly to the hull plates. First step, or lack of it. He breathed out, hard, shaky.

He looked at the readout for his air tanks. This was the critical factor now. He was reading one tank full and one tank at half pressure. Relief flooded through him. He could do it.

Carefully, he got his backpack pulled around. This was the really tricky part. Working quickly but carefully, he closed one of the main valves, shutting off the full tank. The, readout nickered and told him he was on his reserve air supply.

He disconnected the hose from the main tank, unhooked it and pulled it out.

He eased his backpack into place again.

He wrapped himself around the full tank, reaching for the valve as he oriented himself to the receding Event Horizon. This trick had worked for some people in spaceside training, but not for others. It was popular in the Big Rock Range too, where assorted gasses were easy to extract from the asteroids.

He opened the valve, cutting his boot magnets off. Air puffed from the valve, misted, liquefied, froze. He began to move toward the Event Horizon, gathering speed, leaving a crystal trail pointing to where he had been.

The remains of the Lewis and Clark spun silently on.

* * *

><p>Wendy stalked toward the hatchway that led into the bridge, the nailgun feeling hot in her fist.<p>

The hatch was open.

Slowly, she stepped inside, looking left and right.

Someone was sitting at the helm, apparently staring out of the main bridge windows. She raised the nailgun, ready to fire.

Hesitated.

"Tambry," she said. She voice was flat and dead.

No movement. She moved forward, slowly, ready to open fire with a hail of rivets. She could barely breathe.

She moved around the helm position, looking over the nailgun.

Not Tambry. It was Dipper, wired into the helm flight chair, legs pulled back, his wrists bound to them, wire wrapped around his throat to keep his head up though he was unconscious. Blood trickled from his throat where the wire was cutting in. Even in the gloom, Wendy could see that he was becoming cyanotic from the slow strangulation.

"Dipper! Oh god, hold on!," she said, kneeling down and putting the nailgun on the floor, within reach. "Gonna get you out of these…"

Tambry was going into space, the crazy bitch, that Wendy swore, she was gonna stuff her in an airlock and watch her die in vacuum. Even that was better than she deserved.

She worked at the wire, cutting her fingers, but managing to undo the binding around Dipper's throat. Dipper suddenly breathed in, a great painful gasping noise that startled her. She set to work on his arms and ankles, freeing him, trying to stay aware of the bridge around her.

Dipper opened his eyes, moved an arm, stared at her, stared past her, his eyes widening.

Wendy turned, knowing she was too vulnerable.

Tambry was behind her, appearing with the silence and skill of a ghost. Her eyes had been sewn shut, black lines of thread clumsily zigzagging across her eyelids. Lines of dried blood coated her cheeks and chin, marred her flight suit. Her hands were blood-red.

Dipper lunged sideways, trying for the nailgun. Tambry moved like greased lightning, hitting Dipper so hard that the scientist was hurled across the bridge, into a bulkhead, stunning him. In the same move, before Wendy could do anything about it, Tambry snatched up the nailgun, aiming it at Wendy's head, then shifting her aim to Wendy's right eye.

Wendy rose, backed away. "Your eyes…" she whispered.

"I don't need them anymore," Tambry said. Her voice was a cracked curiosity, light with perverse humor, the undertones dark and demonic. This was more than madness, Wendy thought. Tambry had taken the same road that McGucket had gone down. "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

"What are you talking about?" Wendy said.

"Do you know what a singularity is, Corduroy? Can your puny, pathetic little mind truly fathom what a black hole is?" Sightless, she watched Wendy. She smiled slightly. "It is nothing. Absolute and eternal nothing. And if God is everything, then I have seen the Devil." she grinned broadly, spreading her arms joyfully. "It's a very liberating experience."

The nailgun swung back to point at Wendy's eye. Tambry reached out with her free hand, tapped pads, flipped a switch. Displays lit up.

Words appeared on one of the screens, pristine text against a dark background: _**Gravity drive is now primed**__. __**Do you wish to engage?**_

"What are you doing?" Wendy said.

"You'll see," Tambry said. She giggled excitedly and grinned again, reached out and tapped a key. She lowered the nailgun again, barely paying attention to Wendy.

New text appeared on the display: _**Gravity drive engaged. Activation in T-minus ten minutes.** _A countdown timer appeared, running backwards.

Wendy started a lunge for the nailgun in Tambry's hand. It snapped up again.

She backed away carefully. "If you miss me, you'll blow out the hull. You'll die too."

"And what makes you think I'll miss, _Captain_"? Tambry said, sneering at the word "captain".

She's got a point there, Wendy thought.

Something moved at the edge of the bridge windows. Wendy had to work hard to cover her shock. Lee had just drifted into view, peering into the bridge. Wendy could barely believe it. If he could keep Tambry distracted—

Tambry turned so fast that she seemed to blur. The nailgun made a loud spitting sound. A six centimeter nail struck the thick quartz glass of the bridge windows, buried up to the head. A web of minute cracks radiated out from the impact point. Wendy could hear the glass creaking.

Tambry seemed oblivious to the effects of what she was doing. She stepped toward the window, the nailgun held out.

Lee suddenly vanished from the window, leaving behind a crystalline trail. Wendy almost smiled. Lee was a resourceful cuss, that was for sure.

Wendy turned and ran, diving for the door, hitting the deck and rolling through.

Behind her there was the sound of the nailgun firing and the smack of a nail going into the window. Wendy turned around, rising.

Tambry turned to look at Wendy.

The bridge window shattered, the pieces pouring outward with the atmosphere of the bridge. A gale plucked at Wendy, trying to take her off her feet. She managed to grab hold of the door frame, pinning herself in place.

Tambry was picked up by the rush of escaping atmosphere, slammed into the helm console and bounced up toward the shattered window as she flailed, trying to grab hold of something, the nailgun falling from her hand and flying out of the window.

Wendy's nose was beginning to bleed.

The pressure door was moving.

Tambry spread out like a starfish, somehow getting hold of the shattered edges of the bridge window, heedless of the glass chopping into her hand flesh. She started to haul herself back inside, bloody ice forming on her hands and face.

One of the less secure bridge monitors ripped free of its mountings, sailing towards the window, slamming into Tambry's midriff. The navigator flailed wildly, trying to regain her grip, but it was too late. Trailing bloody crystals, Tambry vanished.

Dipper was conscious again, clinging to the side of a console, losing his battle against the outrushing atmosphere. The Event Horizon had a lot of atmosphere to dump.

"Come on!" Wendy yelled to him, hoping, praying her voice would carry.

"I… I can't," he shouted back. His hands were slipping and he was gasping for air, blood starting to stream from his nose.

Wendy turned, grabbing the first almost-loose item that she saw, some kind of compressor unit just outside the bridge. With a yell of desperation, she yanked it loose, slamming it down in the path of the pressure door. Straddling it and putting a hand on the door to help keep it propped open, she leaned into the bridge, holding her other hand out to Dipper.

"Give me your hand!" she screamed. "Your hand!"

Dipper lunged toward her, reaching out. She closed her hand around his. The temperature was dropping rapidly, cold enough now to form a layer of ice on their arms. Their veins were bulging as the pressure continued to drop. She did not want to think about the level of capillary damage they were both experiencing.

The door jerked forward in its track, pushing her, crumpling the compressor slightly.

"The door," Dipper yelled. "It'll cut you in half! Let go! Let me go!"

"I'm not leaving you," Wendy yelled, and she hauled back with all the strength she had left, pulling him back with her into the corridor. As he came Dipper kicked the compressor, loosening it.

Dipper fell on top of Wendy, screaming, and he rolled desperately, trying to get them up against a wall.

The compressor pulled free, flew toward the window.

The pressure door slammed shut, almost taking Wendy's boot heel.

The winds died down.

Wendy gasped for breath, cradling Dipper. They were alive, battered, and half-frozen, but they had made it and Tambry had not. The looked at each other for a moment, before Wendy lunged forward and kissed Dipper. Dipper's eyes widened in shock, but he didn't resist as he felt his arms wrap around Wendy.

As Dipper closed his eyes and lost himself to the woman before him, in the depths of the ship, a Klaxon began to sound.


	22. Chapter 22

"The forward airlock," Wendy said. Her lungs hurt beyond belief, drowning the pains in the rest of her body. Dipper looked like hell.

They got to their feet, making the best speed they could to Airlock Bay 4, deep in the nose of the ship. It could be Lee, but there was no way of knowing yet. Wendy had no idea what Tambry might be capable of—for all they knew, she might consider an involuntary unsuited spacewalk to be no more than lighthearted fun.

They ran into the airlock bay, coming to a stop. The dim light was no help and the flashing light inside the airlock did nothing but confuse things. All Wendy could see was a humanoid shape, moving slowly as it came in.

Wendy crossed the Bay, opening a tool cabinet, taking down a zero-g bolt-cutter. It made a more than adequate bludgeon.

"It can't be him," Dipper said.

"I'm not taking any chances," Wendy said, hefting the bolt-cutter as she walked towards the airlock. "Stay behind me."

The airlock hissed open abruptly.

Lee tumbled in, frantically trying to remove his helmet.

"Lee!" Dipper shouted. He ran to him, opened the clasps, pulling his helmet off. He bent double, his hands on his knees as he took a deep breath of the dank air and started coughing.

He straightened up, trying for another deep breath. "Let me breathe," he gasped, "let me breathe." Lee must have been down to the wire when he started back, Wendy realized.

"You're okay now," Wendy said. "It's over."

"It's not over," Dipper said.

Wendy turned, following Dipper's look. A workstation was active, a display flashing. Gravity drive engaged. Activation: 00:06:43:01

"Tambry activated the drive somehow. I'm gonna try to shut it down." Dipper hurried to a workstation an began typing in the necessary adjustments to shut down the gravity drive.

Lee glanced at the workstation, looked back at Dipper. "How? The bridge—"

"The bridge is gone," Wendy said. "What about Engineering?"

Lee gave Dipper a hard look. "Can you shut it down?"

"Shit! No," Dipper said angrily. "she deactivated the manual override. I can't shut it down."

"Then we blow the fucker up," Wendy said.

"Blow it up?" Dipper said, staring at her as though shr had followed Tambry into the mouth of madness.

Wendy went over to the workstation, the others following. She keyed in commands, pulling up a schematic of the ship, pointing. "We blow the corridor. Like Dipper said: use the foredecks as a life boat, separate it from the rest of the ship. We stay put—"

"And the gravity drive goes where no man has gone before," Lee said, his eyes narrowing.

He did not smile.

They entered the Gravity Couch Bay at a trot. Mabel was still floating comfortably in her tank, unperturbed by the recent events. Dipper was grateful for that—Mabel had been spared some of this insanity.

Lee stopped and turned. "You guys prep the Gravity Couches. I'm going to manually arm those explosives."

"Will this work?" Dipper said.

"It worked for Tambry," Wendy said. She doubted anyone was in the mood for ironic comments. "I'll go prep the tanks."

Dipper stepped toward him. "I'll go with him—"

"Just get those tanks ready," Lee said, moving toward the hatchway. He nodded at the hatch. "Close it behind me. Just in case."

Dipper stared at Lee for a long moment, as though trying to burn his face into his memory. "Lee…"

"Be right back Doc," he said, attempting a reassuring, confident tone and knowing that he was failing miserably.

He smiled, knowing it to be false, and stepped through the hatch. Dipper looy at him for a moment longer, then reached to his right.

The hatch closed with a dull sound and he was alone.

He took a deep breath and ran.

He made it to the central corridor in record time, hurtling along it as though trying to break every sprinting record in the book. Reaching a coupling, he dropped quickly to one knee, reaching down to pop the catches on the cover of an explosive charge.

He lifted the cover off. There was an unlit indicator on the charge, and a single switch. One of the switch positions was labeled MANUAL in bold letters.

Leaving the cover off, he went to the next charge, repeating the process, hurrying as much as he dared. They were almost out of time….

Dipper and Wendy went down the rows of Gravity Couches, checking each one, opening them, closing them again, checking the display panels. As long as everything worked in the life suspension systems, they were in fine shape. On this trip they did not need to worry about the state of the inertial dampers—they were unlikely to be picking up much in the way of thrust.

"I'm gonna activate the emergency beacon," Dipper said.

"Hurry," Wendy said. All things considered, she did not want to spend any time alone, not now.

Dipper grabbed a flashlight from an open locker and pulled open a floor access panel. He peered down into the access tube, then sat down on the edge, lowering himself into it. She watched him vanish, then turned back to her work, going over to the main workstation.

It was a redundant check, but it still needed to be done. She activated three of the empty Gravity Couches, watching the readouts to confirm the proper rate of gel flow into the tanks. So far so good.

Behind her, two of the tanks began to fill with green gel.

In Medical and on the ruined bridge, the bio-scans were going wild again, off the scale, the electronics distorting the data to try and make it fit within the parameters their designers had set.

In the Second Containment, the Core darkened, rippling as energy built up within it. Dark lightning curled around it, reaching out to the control spikes.

Reality ran like water.

Behind Wendy, something thudded against the side of one of the Gravity Couches, startling her out of her focus on the workstation. Before she could turn around, the sound came again.

She expected to see Dipper, back from belowdecks.

She stared for a long moment. Two of the Gravity Couches had filled with green gel, but the third was darker, more liquid. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought that the liquid was blood, but it could not be.

Somewhere in the system, there had been a fluid containment failure, allowing the gel to degrade. She would have to drain the tank and activate another one.

There seemed to be something moving in the tank. Slowly, she walked over to it, trying to focus, trying to figure out what could have gotten into the fluid. She had never heard of this sort of gel breakdown before, but Gravity Couches were not her area of expertise by far.

She leaned toward the tank.

Another low thud.

A face pressed up against the glass of the tank, grinning at her.

Tambry.  
>She screamed, backing away. Tambry's face had not finished forming yet, the skin incomplete, the white of bone showing through, muscle tissue flexing as she worked her jaw.<p>

"Dipper!" she screamed.

The tank exploded in a torrent of glass shards and thick blood.

Tambry, still grinning, still forming, came for her.

Dipper crouched in the access tunnel beneath the Gravity Couch Bay, working his way along the circuit panels, finally locating the breaker that controlled power to the emergency beacon. It had somehow been fused open.

Working quickly, he rigged a bypass, restoring power. The panel in front of him lit up like a bad night in Las Vegas. It would take hours yet, but USAC would eventually pick up the distress beacon.

He closed the panel and backed up.

Something wet and sticky struck his shoulder, soaking into his flight suit.

He turned his head, shocked, looked up. Blood was running in a rivulet along the ceiling, dripping at intervals.

He started back toward the vertical access.

"Wendy?" he called. Blood was splashing into the access tunnel, far too much of it to be from one single person. "Wendy?!"

He reached the ladder, moving cautiously to look upward.

Wendy fell, almost catching herself on the ladder, losing her grip. She was covered in blood. She landed awkwardly on the deck, rolled over, tried to get to her feet. Dipper rushed to help her.

"Run!" she screamed at him, shoving him away.

He looked up.

Tambry oozed into the vertical access, staring down at them, coming headfirst down the ladder like a gigantic spider. She hissed as she moved. Dipper saw raw muscle, distorted tissue.

Dipper ran. Wendy, staggering, came after him.

The Hellhound had arrived.


	23. Chapter 23

Lee knelt, opening the last of the charges, flipping the switch. This was the important one, marked with a red radio sigil. There was a second switch inside the container. He flipped it. A small cover popped open.

Carefully, he reached inside and removed a small radio detonator. This system had been built with fail-safes in mind, granting the possibility that the computer-controlled systems might be offline or destroyed. In an emergency the Event Horizon's crew could have made it home to Earth, given that they were still within this solar system, or to landfall on any seemingly hospitable planet.

There were two buttons on the radio detonator, one green, one red. He pressed the green button.

Red lights glowed through the gloom of the corridor, marking the location of the couplings. He was almost down at the First Containment now. He would be racing the clock to get back to the Gravity Couch Bay before the gravity drive activated.

He found an intercom panel, keyed it. "We're armed, she's ready to blow," he said. "Repeat, we are armed."

There was no reply from the intercom. "Dipper, you copy? Wendy?"

He swore under his breath. The only thing he could do now was run like hell and hope he made it.

He turned.

The corridor suddenly cooled as the temperature dropped, the air turning frosty around him.

A young woman, naked and soaking wet, filled the corridor with an icy chill from wall to wall, ice forming around the exit blocking Lee's escape.

"You left me behind," the liquid woman hissed, his voice crackling and popping like melting ice.

"Annabel…" Lee said, afraid.

"I begged you. I begged you to save me."

"I couldn't," Lee said. Was there any hope that Anna would ever understand? Did it matter? In his heart, he had always expected that amends would someday be due. "Do you think I didn't want to?"

"You abandoned me. You stood there and did nothing as I drowned." The voice crackled with anger and the Lee felt water form around his ankles.

"That's not true!" Lee screamed.

"You let me drown!" The water was ice cold, chilling Lee to the bone. He felt all feeling in his feet go numb, as the woman let out a howl of rage and accusation.

The liquid woman pointed. Water shot out of her fingertips, liquid and swift, flowing over the walls, the floor and ceiling.

Lee turned and ran frantically into the First Containment. An alarm shrieked. The water was almost at his heels, chasing him like something alive as he fled into the separator and toward the Second Containment.

The main door to the Second Containment was closing, either in answer to the Core, or in response to the water. He pushed harder, dove headlong through the remaining gap, skinning his side on the door. The floor here was slick with coolant, and he could not get his balance. He slammed into the main workstation console, fetching up hard.

The door was not quite closed. Waves gouted through the tiny opening, spewing towards him. He rolled aside, covering his head, feeling the coldness of the water going past him.

The console exploded, showering him with hot plastic and metal, parts splashing into the coolant and ricocheting from the bulkheads and the door.

He looked up. The door was shut firmly now.

Lee stood up, carefully. He looked at the detonator in his hand, shaking his head. They were about out of time, and he regretted his reassurance to his Dipper. He would get Wendy and himself taken care of, no matter what.

He was afraid of where he was going.

Red light washed over him again, and his shadow grew tall in front of him.

He turned, and took an involuntary step backward, shocked at the sight that greeted him.

The Second Containment was a fury of fire, a wall-to-wall holocaust, fire flowing over the control spikes, over the surfaces, pouring through the air.

The Core glowed cherry red, orange, its color shifting through blazing white, a small, corrupt sun in the heart of chaos.

"Don't leave me!"

He turned toward the crackling voice. The liquid woman was beside him.

Lee started to back away, but he was not fast enough. The woman swung her arm, smashing it into Lee.

Lee tumbled and slid, his clothes soaking, his hair froze. He fell into the coolant, losing the detonator as he struck the deck. His head went under the muck and coolant went into his mouth, tasting foul.

He rolled over and pushed himself up, spitting coolant out, choking from the taste, trying not to vomit.

The woman was walking toward him, the coolant freezing where her feet came down.

Lee knew, now, knew the truth, or at least some of the truth. There had been just too much…

"Look at me!" the liquid woman commanded, but Lee was not having any of that now.

Facing the woman, Lee shouted, "No! You're not Annabel! You aren't my sister! I know you're not… because I saw her die!"

The liquid woman stopped.

The water faded away, leaving only a ghost of chill. The Second Containment was dark, humming with the power that was building.

Tambry DiCicco stood before him now, but this was not the Tambry he knew. The body was larger, misshapen. The face was hers, but the skin appeared to have the texture of wood. Runes had been etched into Tambry's forehead and cheeks.

The monster had eyes. They glittered a dark black, too large, too deep. There was a coldness there, a look that spoke of millions of years. The creature had some of Tambry's form, but it reeked of an alien nature that left Lee with a sense of horror that transcended anything he had ever felt.

"Tambry?" he said.

"Tambry is gone," the creature said, but its voice was remarkably like that of the navigator. "That poor, dumb bitch. She was helping reach for the heavens, but all she found was me."

Lee stared, forcing himself past his reactions. "Well, what the fuck are you?"

"You know what I am."

Without thinking, Lee swung, a right cross that the creature caught easily. Lee screamed as his fist was slowly crushed. Long nails cut into his flesh and blood ran.

The creature hurled him away, into a bulkhead. Something cracked in Lee's side, and he slid down, sitting in the coolant, stunned, barely able to breathe.

The creature walked slowly toward him. "I am your confessor." It bent to look at him, tilting its head. "Confess your sins to me. I feel the weight of your sister's death inside you."

Lee raised his head. "What do you want from me?" He was weary. He wished this would be over.

"Respect," the creature said, crouching to face him. "The reverence I deserve. Or did you think you could profane this place without it coming to my attention? Did you think you could come pounding on my door and I would not answer?"

"Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?" Lee hissed.

The creature grinned. "Kill you? I don't want you dead. Just the opposite. I want you to live forever." The creature reached out to him, grasping his head. Lee struggled, twisting. He could not break the creature's grasp.

"Let me show you."

Lee screamed.

Images cascaded through his mind, horrific, endless. In moments he saw the bloody fates of the original crew, saw them torn apart, degraded, destroyed from within and without. He was drowning in blood and suffering, too much of it for him to accept, too much to withstand.

"Do you see?" the creature asked, its parody of Tambry's voice almost a caress.

Lee writhed, trying to break the contact, trying to make the horror stop.

His hand struck something under the surface of the coolant. The pain jarred him free of the cascade of images for a moment, long enough. He reached down, grasping, found a familiar handle. A CO 2 scrubber, dropped by either Robbie or Soos.

The visions surged back, swirling through his mind.

"Do you see?" the creature whispered.

He saw. Mabel, Dipper, and Wendy had been crucified upside-down over the Core, blood dripping from their bodies.

"No!" Lee cried, thrashing. "They're not dead! You didn't get them!"

"Not yet," the creature said. "Soon. Very soon."

"No!" Lee screamed.

He thrashed around again, and this time his head came away from the creature's hands. He sank beneath the coolant for a moment, then surged up, bringing the CO2 scrubber up and around, slamming it into the creature's head.

The creature staggered back, shaking its head, blinking.

Lee came to his feet. "Leave them alone!"

He swung the scrubber again, with all the force he could muster, snapping the creature's head around, making it stagger. He saw blood pouring from an open wound, filling the runes.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" Lee screamed at the creature, letting the fury take him over. He swung the scrubber back and forth, scything, each blow sending the creature staggering back.

He swung again.

The creature reached up, snatching the scrubber out of the air, ripping it from Lee's hands, hurling it away. In a blur, it had Lee, too, lifting him, flinging him into the coolant.

Lee slammed into the deck, coolant washing over him. Pain flooded his body from head to foot. He knew things were broken, ribs, organs, there had to be internal bleeding.

He could not move.

The creature stood over him. An improbably long tongue eeled out of its mouth, licking at the bloody runes on its face. It smacked its lips, pleased.

"Yes," it hissed. "I had forgotten how good that can taste."

Lee lay in the coolant, moaning.

The creature squatted over him. "You should be flattered I've taken an interest in you. Tambry, the others… they were easy. But you will fight."

Beyond the creature, the Core was a deepening darkness, swelling outward.

All around, the control rods were moving. Darkness seemed to be filling the universe.

Dark fire flashed through the runes on the creature's face, traveled down the length of its body, revealing more runes, intricately woven together.

"You will struggle against me with every ounce of strength you possess… right up to the moment when you surrender to me willingly."

"Don't count on it," Lee hissed through clenched teeth.

His fingers touched something small, hard in the coolant.

A great deep rumbling filled the Second Containment. The control rods were entering the Core now.

Hoping blindly, Lee closed his hand.

"I don't ask you to embrace me with blind faith," the creature said, softly. "I will win you."

Will you now? Lee rolled over, getting to all fours, trying to get to his feet. It's time, he thought, time to go.

The creature kicked out.

Lee slid again, pushing a bow wave of coolant ahead of himself. Pale fire ripped through him. At this rate he would not last much longer.

Sorry guys, he thought.

He tried to rise again, and could not complete his movement. He fell back into the muck.

In the distance, the Core swelled, its humming reaching a crescendo. Energy pulsed forth, along the control rods, rippling along the surfaces of the walls.

The creature came down to him.

Through a red haze of pain, Lee said, "You want me to pay for… mistakes?"

"I want to reward you for them," the creature said, smiling. It was a mass of brilliant runes now, growing stronger as the Core continued its progress.

Reality had melted around the Core, the walls shifting, changing, vanishing, becoming part of the Core's intolerable blackness. The universe was being swallowed by the heart of this ship.

The Core grew, screaming.

"You want me to burn in hell?" Lee said. "You want to take my soul? Sorry, it's not for sale."

The creature was folding its body into a kneeling shape by him. It bent until its face was centimeters from Lee's. He could smell the stink of its breath over everything else.

"I will give you endless days of pain," the creature said, "immeasurable agony. The more profound your despair, the greater will be my pleasure. And, in the end, after all of it… you will thank me."

A surge of movement. The creature grasped Lee by the front of his flight suit, lifting him from the coolant, holding him in the air, still eye to eye.

Lee glared into the hellish corruption of Tambry's face, unwavering.

"Do you see?" the creature said. It was framed by the chaos that had been the Second Containment. "Do you see?!"

"Yes," Lee said, choosing his destiny there and then, regretting nothing, "I see."

He raised his fist, held it between their faces. Without irony, he said, "Go to hell."

He pressed the second button.


	24. Chapter 24

Dipper and Wendy were in a side corridor when the explosive charges went off. The Event Horizon seemed to lift and leap forward, pulling free, sending them both tumbling to the deck.

They got up again, made it to a window.

The drive section of the Event Horizon had plunged into the atmosphere of Neptune, some of its velocity leeched away by the separation of the foredecks.

A black sphere was growing around the heart of the drive section, swallowing it up, growing. The blue clouds were swirling around it, a whirlpool forming. They were witnessing a black hole forming and working.

The black sphere expanded rapidly, paused as it swallowed the main part of the drive section.

Even more quickly, the black hole shrank, Neptune's clouds becoming ever more agitated the more the Schwarzschild radius contracted. Within a few moments, all that was left was a dark gap in the cloudscape, and even that was being filled in as Neptune's winds worked to erase the scar.

Wendy touched the cold quartz of the window, her heart breaking, knowing that her friend would not be coming back. The thing that had been Tambry had suddenly abandoned its pursuit of the two of them, scenting more interesting game. She had known that Lee would not be returning, no matter how much of a brave face he had put on.

She leaned against the window while Dipper watched the place where the other half of the Event Horizon had been. They would have to get into the Gravity Couches soon, taking their chances that USAC would mount another rescue mission. They might well drift forever, lost.

She turned away.

Darkness. Three beams of light cut through the darkness.

There were three of them, in full EVA gear, their lights playing over the interior of the Gravity Couch Bay, finding the shattered tank, the bloody floor.

Three tanks were occupied. Females, one male.

One of the astronauts approached Wendy's tank, her light shining into her face.

Suddenly, her eyes opened.

She struggled, kicked, panicking. The tank drained rapidly, opened, disgorged her.

She fell to the floor, no strength in her arms and legs.

She looked up, wondering how she could have been seeing things outside of her body while she was unconscious in the tank. She could not speak.

The astronaut bent to help her up.

"You're safe now," she said, gently.

Her mind filled with thoughts of others. "Dipper, is he… Mabel …"  
>"They're fine, they're with us." The astronaut reached up, undogged she helmet. "You're all with us now."<p>

She pulled her helmet off.

Tambry smiled at her, her darkened face covered with runes, her eyes strange and alien and black.

"You're with us," she said, softly, reaching for her.

She began to scream.

They had emptied the second tank and gotten the woman, Wendy, onto a bio-stretcher, everything going fine until she had opened her eyes and begun screaming for no reason that anyone could see.

The rescue tech ministering to her turned around, yelling, "We need a sedative here!"

Dipper pushed the rescue tech aside, grabbing Wendy shoulders, trying to get through to her, to comfort her. No one in the rescue team had a clue as to what had taken place here, only that it had been traumatic in nature.

"Wendy! Wendy, it's me!" Dipper said, trying to break through her screaming.

"It's me, come on now, it's okay, we're okay, we're okay…"

But she had seen the face of the beast, and had known it would always be with her.

She continued to scream….

* * *

><p>It was so bright. There was no sound. No feeling. She knew she was breathing though.<p>

Was this death?

No. She knew what was death, what was lurking behind it. The face of a horrible creature, twisted muscle and warped bone burst into Wendy's mind.

Her eyes opened and she blinked.

It was bright, but she could hear now. Birds were chirping and a half-shaded window showed something she had not expected. She was no longer in the clutches of the Event Horizon. Nor, by her immediate study, aboard any kind of spacecraft. She was on a planet.

Earth.

Wendy tried moving herself, and found it slightly more tasking than she had anticipated. Was she drugged? Tired? She certainly found herself staring at her heavy, groggy arms and legs. Her legs were more pinned down than the rest of her, tied under heavy blankets and, to her annoyance, several IV's stabbed into her arm.

There was a brown haired man sleeping on her legs. His face was out of focus, along with the rest of the world around Wendy. Blinking slowly corrected the irregular vision, she saw his face.

"Dipper," she groaned, her voice barely breaking out from her mouth. Her lips felt dry.

The man near her stirred, his eyes cracking and looking to her hopefully. He blinked again when she stared at him back. "Wendy!" Dipper Pines almost fell back out of his chair, which he had been sitting in. "Captain!"

"Doctor," Wendy grumbled as she began to remove the IV's from her arm.

Dipper rubbed his eyes and spotted the needle and tubes dangling from the side of her bed. "You probably shouldn't do-"

Wendy was quick to regain her authority. "I'll remove whatever the damn hell I want from my body if it doesn't belong there, doctor Pines," she barked, forcing her mind to ignore the brief uncomfortable pain of a syringe retracting from her body. Trying to lean up had different consequences though. Her head swam again, and she groaned.

"Easy," Dipper was already at her side, clutching her shoulders gently and keeping her stable, which was a good thing because she quickly leaned to one side, staring at the wall past him. "You've been gone for a long time, captain. You need to take it easy."

Wendy stared into the shifting blur she knew to be Dipper. "A long time. How long?" she again started blinking, and found herself looking into those brown eyes. Not a bad looking guy up close, she let her brain think for a moment.

"Well, we had to be set back, but once we were here, you were under psych evaluation, and-"

"Dipper," Wendy cleared her throat, and put a hand to his ear, staring into his eyes, "please. How long was I out?" He looked uncertain.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Wendy leaned back and considered. "Hands. Someone was grabbing me."

Dipper nodded and looked solemn. With a gentle nudge, he lowered her back and then pressed a button along her bed. Her back was slowly lifted as her bed rose to an upright position. His deep breath only told Wendy the news wasn't entirely good.

"A year. You've been out cold for a full year. Psychological evaluation through subconscious study."

"Jesus..."

Wendy and Dipper stared at one another. It had been a full year since hell itself found a hole through the universe to crawl out of and take into the body of an unsuspecting girl. Tambry was gone. Nate was gone. Soos, Lee, Robbie-

"Where is Mabel?" Wendy looked to Dipper.

His already solemn face took a dark turn. He stood up from Wendy, but she refused to let him leave. Whatever the news, she needed to know it. "Dipper. Where is Mabel?" He still looked away, but her hand prevented him from moving away any further.

"She's alive."

It wasn't the most comforting news, especially the way he put it. He had said it so forcefully, almost like he couldn't let himself say anything other than that.

"Where?"

"Here. In the hospital," he informed her. "I need to go check on her. Let me go, captain."

"Dipper, please look at me," Wendy Corduroy asked softly.

It could have been the way she asked, or the fact she asked at all that made Dipper reconsider his desires to leave. But he did slowly turn. His face was a mess. His eyes had watered horribly and his face had grown red. There was more than just 'she's alive'.

"Doct- Dipper," Wendy pulled him closer, using his arm as leverage, "what is going on?"

His lip trembled.

"She's not going to make it."

An hour of trying to convince Wendy to remain in her bed, even to the point where three nurses were summoned from her shouting, Wendy was stomping through the halls in only a stolen doctors jacket and her hospital onesie. Dipper was following her in haste, trying to calm her.

"You were too deep into therapy to be woken up."

"She's under my protection and leadership, and your sister for gods sake," Wendy rounded on Dipper, stopping dramatically in the hallway, "were you just going to let that one slide over my head?"

"No! I told you, didn't I?" Dipper explained, trying to maintain a civil voice as Wendy whipped back around, "you weren't supposed to be woken up; by orders of-"

"Which room?" Wendy interrupted, looking around the hospital corridor.

"Wendy, please-"

"Where is Mabel?" Wendy demanded.

"She's sleeping!" Dipper hissed angrily at her, his eyes growing wide in his burst of anger, "and she should rest! It'll be probably her last... time, you know?"

Wendy stared back at Dipper. His face was a nasty shade of crimson, possibly from the combination of embarrassment, anger, and sorrow. Wendy sighed and clutched her face. "I want to see her. Dipper," she asked as she looked to the floor, "please. Let me speak to my pilot."

"Your pilot? She's my sister," he growled at her, "and I think I get a say to who her visitors are, more so than you, captain." Dipper stood firmly before Wendy, a determination in his eyes unlike that Wendy had seen before.

"Please?"

It came as a surprise to both of them, as Dipper blinked and Wendy looked at him in shock that she had been able to use a tone so alien to herself. It had been a long time since everything felt so out of place. Dipper Pines gave the orders, and she was the one who needed permission. But the strength in his eyes waned, and he nodded. Quietly, he walked past her.

Wend followed up an elevator into the critical care wards. Here, sound seemed so faded and muted, only the occasional beep of a electronic pulse told Wendy of the care the patients here were receiving. Dipper stopped past many of these rooms, and stared at a door to his right. Several nurses were stationed by the door, peering occasionally inside, like Dipper and Wendy. There was a window along the door, and Wendy stepped forward.

She saw a woman inside a large cellular rebuilding- a machine that promoted cell regeneration and production over long spans of time. They were very expensive, and hard to find at all in public hospitals. Dipper's connection to the Event Horizon project probably got him a chance of procuring one of these for Mabel, as Wendy reasoned.

"She's been in one of these?" Wendy gasped as she turned to Dipper.

"It's not enough," Dipper said grimly, "the damage was too much for an operation, and the cell regrowth is too insignificant."

"She... she's really going to die?" Wendy restated as she looked to the brother. He nodded and stepped closer to the door, pushing past Wendy and into the room with a twist of the handle.

The machine beeped and what sounded like a strong whir of the machine buzzed around the room. It was like an old iron lung, but white in its construction and exposed the frail, unconscious Mabel Pines.

Her skin was worn looking, scarred. Her face still showed signs of broken vessels, as discoloration throughout her skin was constant. Wendy followed Dipper into the room and clenched her fists as she saw the damage the girl had taken, and was still unrepaired from.

"It just sustains her," Dipper added as they got close to the thick glass casing, "the damage was too cellular for surgery." Wendy nodded and put a hand on the casing, feeling the warmth radiating from inside.

"She's comfortable?"

"As much as you can be with burning eyes and skin," Dipper told her with a wipe of his eyes, "pain suppressors are the only way we could keep her still. She said her skin felt like it was loose and burning."

"Shit," Wendy growled and she lowered her head onto the Cellular Regeneration module. "What... when..."

"C-captain?"

Dipper and Wendy gasped. The captain lifted herself from the casing and looked inside. Mabel was peering at her, one eye open. It looked bloodshot and barely functional, as the vessels inside had still not been fully repaired.

"Mabel," Wendy smiled and leaned closer as Dipper took to be next to her.

"Hey Mabel."

"Captain. Dipping sauce," Mabel groaned as she blinked, "she woke up."

"Yeah. She wanted to see you," Dipper nodded hopefully, "you know, check up on you."

"Cool," Mabel swallowed, and gasped loudly," garble knockers! That still hurts."

Wendy held back her own expulsion of air. The poor girl had coughed up a tiny splatter oh blood, landing on her own white clothing. She really wasn't doing well still, and she had been like this for a year.

"How are you, captain?" Mabel asked, closing her eye and shifting slightly.

"I'm fine," Wendy assured her, "I had a nightmare, but I'm fine now."

"Aw man," Mabel smiled, showing a bit of her white teeth, "sorry captain." Mabel then grinned wide and looked to her brother. "Dipper had some too."

"Mabel-"

"Of back on the ship. He's been having them for ages," Mabel said sadly, groaning and shutting her eyes, "Ow. Stupid light is so bright." Dipper quickly spun and dimmed the lights, simultaneously having the tinted windows grow further darkened. "Thanks bro."

"Mabel, they say how long it'll take to get you out?" Wendy asked, forcing a smile to her face, "because I need my pilot back. We're going to need to get back on our feet."

Mabel laughed calmly, and shook her head. "I know what's coming already, Wendy." The captain shook her head.

"I'll be damned," Wendy growled, yet still smiled, "If the bravest co-pilot I have ever heard of, who survived the exposure of space itself, dies in a stupid hospital. You need to get back on your feet. I don't care how."

"I can't feel my feet," Mabel laughed, "I can't even feel my face."

"That's the medicine," Dipper told Wendy when she turned and looked worriedly at the brother. "Numbs her head to toe."

"I miss feeling things that aren't painful," Mabel spoke gently, looking to the tinted window. "I bet it's nice outside. It looks nice out today."

"Nah. It's crappy," Dipper told her with a chuckle, "I'd rather spend the day inside here."

"You would, would you?" Mabel snickered. Her arm lifted up, barely controlling the shakey limb with her best focus.

"Mabel, be careful," Dipper said worriedly, "don't hurt yourself."

"I'm already going to die," Mabel laughed loudly, "what's the worst that can happen?"

Dipper shook his head, his mouth screwing up and his eyes slamming shut. Wendy's lips trembled but she fought it harder than the twin next to her. "Mabel. C'mon Pines," Wendy demanded of her, "I can't do this alone. I'm a captain, but I need officers. I can't let my last one die on me."

"You didn't," Mabel told her as her hand touched the glass case on her side, "you already saved me. Remember?" Wendy shook her head quickly.

"Not good enough."

"Good enough for me," Mabel whispered, and coughed. More blood fell from her lips, splattering her shirt. "Aw, man. And I look so good in white."

"Mabel-"

"Dipper," Mabel cooed as her brother touched her hand on the opposite side. He was crying, fully incapable of stopping his tears. "Be strong for me, okay? I need you to move on, you know?"

"I've always had a twin," Dipper shook his head, "you've always been out there somewhere."

"Ha. Just pretend I'm out there still. I mean," Mabel rolled her eyes and looked to her captain, "we found hell by accident. What if there is a heaven?" Dipper's mouth fell open, and Mabel laughed her fullest. "Ha. Your face. Now that's worth it."

Mabel turned to Wendy, and she slowly lifted her other hand to her forehead, and gave a shakey, slow salute. Wendy forced her face into stone, but a single tear fell past her face. She replied in kind, and gave Mabel a single salute.

"Dipper, I love you," Mabel told her brother as her hands fell to her sides, "I'm... I'm going to go to sleep now. Let the nurses know I'm ready, okay?"

"I'm staying here," Dipper demanded through a trembling voice.

"Okay buddy," Mabel nodded, and looked to her captain, "let them know, please?"

"...I will. Goodbye, Mabel," Wendy nodded and walked her way out of the room.

The next hour was a blur to Captain Wendy Corduroy. Insurance claims to her ship flew by on papers that dug themselves into her face by pushy lawyers, to which she exploded angrily, causing them to flee indignantly. She wouldn't be told what she could and could not do now. Not after what she had seen. She would perform a full report later.

He clothes collected, and her condition stable, she eventually walked out of the hospital front doors.

Despite Dipper's insistence, it was a very nice, blue day. A few seldom clouds dotted the skies above, and Wendy found herself located at the base of the Appalachian Grand Repose Hospital doors. The east coast of the north American continent.

There was a bus stop nearby from her exit, and she studied the option. Her apartment had been her ship. Her investments, her ship. Her life had been the Lewis and Clark and it's crew. She hadn't been around to see the nurses enter the room, but she knew now for sure she was alone.

Down several steps of stairs she traveled, ready to sit by the bus with her small selection of things still on her, she then spotted a man already sitting there.

It was Dipper.

"Doctor," Wendy said as she walked over, holding herself upright.

The man did not turn to face her. He didn't even seem to comprehend her presence. Dipper Pines stared ahead, looking into the woodlands that remained in the mountains of the Appalachian stretch. Tears still fell from his face. He was in a self-laid trance, waiting for the bus silently, while mourning.

"Dipper."

The man stirred and looked slowly to Wendy, confusion in his eyes. She stared back, her own tired eyes drinking in the horrible dawn he had come across. He too was alone.

"Captain," Dipper nodded with his mouth slightly open, numbly looking back ahead. "I guess you'll be needing a buss ride as well."

"Well, I don't own a car here," Wendy shrugged and sat next to him, "and unless the remains of my ship are operational and somewhere nearby, I get the feeling I'm about all there is now left of the Lewis and Clark."

"You were thirty minutes ago," Dipper Pines informed her.

Wendy eyed him. The top of his shirt was still soaked from the silent tears that ran down his face. She wanted to scold him, to tell him to man up. She had lost more than him, and here he was bawling like a kid.

Then again, how could she be that horrible now. She wanted to let out, unzip the tightly kept secret of Wendy's emotional turmoil, allow it to bubble out into a mess somewhere. She had never felt permitted to do such a thing while under the company of the crew- as she needed to be the powerful head of the entire group. Now, there was no one.

No one left but her and Dipper.

"I... Dipper," Wendy touched his shoulder, "I need a place to crash for a night. I... Dipper, I know this is a lot to ask of you now, but could you help-"

Her words were muffled as he turned in his seat and clutched her tightly. Her arms were squeezed down her sides as the man beside her clenched down, hugging her with loud sobs. It ate at her resolve. Her deep rooted empathy, long wilted and untouched, was showered with watery tears, flooding into its long uncared for tendrils new life.

She hugged back, tears falling from her face.

"Yes," Dipper nodded in the hug, still crying, "I can give you a bed to crash in. My couch is really nice too, since-"

Wendy 'shhs'ed him, and lifted his head, looking into his eyes. "Anything will do, doctor." Dipper smiled. He only needed to look once into her eyes, and then to her lips when Wendy got the same idea he had. "I'll allow it," she jokingly said and kissed him.

When the bus finally came around the bend that would lead towards the heart of the Washington DC metropolips, Dipper and Wendy had already decided that it would not be a place to stay.

They had seen something. A thing so terrible and evil in intent that it took bending the universe itself to release it into their realm of existence. Such a heavy burden of knowledge, and nightmares couldn't be left alone.

Hell was real. It was a void between all that was in their universe.

Yet, as the two lone survivors of the Lewis and Clark sat down in their bus, there was a duel promise of hope. They would not be alone to suffer, not as long as they knew they suffered.

"We found hell by accident. What if there still is a heaven?"

* * *

><p><em>Hello everybody! My name is TheEquestrianidiot 2.0, here with a . . . . Well, I wouldn't really call it an Author's Note, more of a writers blog. But first and foremost, I have to say thank you. Thank you to StkAmbln, RaminL13, Michipls, GravityFallsMD, Hylianbattlefront, Chaotic Time Lady, Wild card in the deck, A Random Guest, and everyone who read, followed, faved, and reviewed this story. It really means a lot, and I just can't say thanks enough. This fandom really is awesome and I've gotten more love from this fandom in a month, then I've gotten with the Friendship is Magic fandom in the past three years, and that's saying something!<em>

_And, I think the four people that really have to thank are ddp456, SuperGroverAway, Montydragon, and EZB. They have written some of the best Gravity Falls fanfics I have ever read and have inspired me so much in the time that I've begun writing for this fandom. It's absolutely incredible, the stuff that they can think of. I just- thank you all so much, for everything that you've done. I love you guys and you're some the the greatest and most talented people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and so, from the bottom of my heart, thank you, especially you, EZB. Your a great man, and an amazing author. I still can't thank you enough for everything that you added to this story, especially this Epilogue._

_Man, writing this was something. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I had to watch the film to get ever little detail right, but in the end, it was worth it. And the chapter you're reading now isn't a part of the movie. I actually hated the original ending and wanted to give it one that I thought was right. I love happy endings. Except when I don't. XD_

_But anyway! Once again, thank you all so much for reading this. It really means a lot. So from the bottom of my heart, and to one and all - my friends, my followers, my family, no matter what you celebrate or who you are, I wish you a very Happy New Year with much love and respect. For now, I think I'm gonna take a long, well deserved break._  
><em>.<em>  
><em>.<em>  
><em>.<em>  
><em>. <em>  
><em>Nah, fuck that shiz. I'll be back and hopefully better then ever soon! I've already got another work in progress! It should be out soon, when it's released, you guys can just *Ahem* "jump" right into it. ;)<em>

_God bless you all and thank you for a great internet year. Stay awesome, and I will see YOU . . . in the next chapter. Bye-bye!_


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